


Back and Blue

by Spellmugwump



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Aurors, Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Friendship, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Harry Potter is a Good Friend, Harry is a Good Friend, Head Auror Harry Potter, Hogwarts, Mother-Son Relationship, Next Gen, Next Generation, Post-Battle, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Wizarding Culture (Harry Potter), Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter), Wizarding World (Harry Potter), back from the dead, godfatherly love, magic works in mysterious ways, revival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spellmugwump/pseuds/Spellmugwump
Summary: The dead are no longer sleeping, and the wizarding world must to learn to live with it... and suffer the consequences, too.In other words: Harry Potter discovers he is woefully unprepared to deal with his dead Godfather wandering about his workplace.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley, Harry Potter & James Potter, Harry Potter & Lily Evans Potter, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 205
Kudos: 643





	1. Padfoot

_‘You won’t be killing anyone else tonight … You won’t be able to kill any of them, ever again. Don’t you get it? I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people … I meant to, and that’s what did it. I’ve done what my mother did. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?’_ – Harry Potter to Lord Voldemort, Deathly Hallows, p. 591.

* * *

One moment he had been suspended in a slow fall, only the pain of Bellatrix’s curse to remind him that he was still alive. The next, he was on the stone on the other side of the veil, blood seeping into his chest and lungs winded from the fall.

Gasping, ears ringing, Sirius flailed as he tried to find his wand – Harry was there, and the other children too, and Voldemort was surely coming to get his prophecy …

But it was quiet. Silent, in fact. Sirius’ eyes rolled around as he tried to find Death Eaters in the darkness, tried to find a flash of Lucius Malfoy’s hair or the silver of masks or Dumbledore’s beard. There were no flashes of spells or hurrying feet.

Perhaps – he staggered to his feet, back aching, bones withered after Azkaban – the fight had moved somewhere else. He might have even been knocked out and left slumped there at the foot of the veil, left for dead. Not much time could have passed, surely, for he was in the Ministry and he was not in chains. He, the infamous Sirius Black had not been recaptured. Yet.

His chest pulsed in short bursts that made his vision blur at the edges each time. He must find the group, look for Harry and Remus and all the rest. Look for Lord Voldemort, if he must.

Unsettled and without a wand, Sirius leant carefully on the floor and the side of the veil in turn, wary of the silence it now afforded him. There were no whispers from the veil; it did not flutter. He stood slowly and took a few steps away from the veil before feeling comfortable to look around himself properly.

There wasn’t a sign of anything at all, he thought in disbelief. No battle, no fight, no scuffle. Not even the hint of a single witch or wizard touched the strange limbo he found himself in.

‘Strange,’ Sirius muttered, left hand clutching his chest as he made his was slowly down the steps. His footsteps rebounded around the room.

A soft light came from an archway and Sirius approached it with caution. He had briefly seen the state Harry’s schoolfriends were in and was woefully unprepared to fight off anything of the kind even if he didn’t have the inexperience of a teenager anymore. The least he could do for himself, he reasoned, was to ensure he was not taken by surprise. It was because of this that his hands clenched into fists – one around the filthy material of his clothes, the other around itself – and why he stepped slowly and deliberately towards the doorway.

Nobody else seemed to occupy the Department of Mysteries. No Unspeakable shuffled by; not a sound bounced off the tiles. Sirius was faced with, somehow, an entirely empty circular room. Corridors branched off on his left and right, both turning into the distance a mere ten feet in. Opposite was a lift, the only point of interest.

Sirius was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If this was the only alternative to wandering aimlessly through the Department of Mysteries while his godson faced Death Eaters somewhere in the building, he would take it. Perhaps the Department itself, sentient and judging, had decided he was worthy of a chance to do some good in the boy’s life.

Having stepped lightly into the lift, the shutter rattled closed with a shriek. Sirius wet his lips and coughed. ‘The Atrium, please.’ He asked, eyes moving upwards as his body shrunk downwards, growing hair and legs as he took on the familiar form of his animagus.

* * *

Percy Weasley was working late. He thought he would get away with it because Audrey was still basking in the Christmas after-glow, and was pleased to have more time to herself after the insanity of waking up with a revolving number of relatives in your home. The girls were back at Hogwarts, sending a half-hearted letter apiece, and so Percy was comfortable with devoting himself to his work for the time being.

Nevertheless … the legislation he was working on required intense concentration which he had only managed to muster at three o’clock that afternoon; he doubted he would be able to pull himself back to it another time. Gone were the days of feeling passionate about cauldron bottom thickness; the excitement of beginning a career in government would have worn off quickly even without all the nastiness that soon followed.

It was just gone eight o’clock when Percy next looked at the time with a sigh. He was expected to complete another fourteen and a half inches of parchment by the end of the week and it was Wednesday already.

Dinner indoors by the fire desperately calling to him, Percy shuffled out of his chair and made the arduous journey to the tea station in the corridor. There were not many witches or wizards on the Minister for Magic’s team, and so the halls surrounding Kingsley’s office were not often bustling. This kept the kettle free and blissfully accessible. Percy hated to think on the state of the sugar bowl in the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. He preferred the quiet rustling of parchment and dim lighting of his workplace.

When he was watching the water turn a deeper brown, mind thankfully straying away from acceptable trading standards for magical phials and measuring instruments, the corridor bloomed in orange light. Kingsley emerged from his office looking tired.

‘Tea?’ Percy asked, stirring his own cup. Kingsley nodded and scrubbed his face.

‘Give me an extra sugar,’ he said lowly, grimacing. ‘Dawlish has only just finished whinging.’

Percy did not envy him. Dawlish, having retained his job by the skin of his teeth (and considerable pleading that he had spent the war confounded and not, as George had sneered, merely being a coward and thick as dragon dung) was engaged in a constant, one-sided battle to be promoted after his many years of loyal service.

Kingsley always refused.

‘When do you reckon he’ll retire?’ Percy asked conversationally, getting the milk.

Kingsley smiled wryly. ‘He’ll be killed off first. Either by a dark wizard trying his luck or –’

‘Harry.’ Percy finished with a grin. Kingsley laughed deeply. As their laughter, fuelled by hysteria of managing the pile up of work from the Christmas break, petered out, Percy glanced over Kingsley’s shoulder. The smile slid off his face.

‘Percy?’ Kingsley said suddenly, wand already in hand. The mug Percy held began to shake. His hand was getting scalded and he had left his wand, stupidly, at his desk.

Kingsley was already turning and had stilled by the time Percy managed to point. On the far end of the corridor, trotting towards them, was a large black dog with straggling hair. It was shadowed by the empty cubicles around it, light from Kingsley’s still open door glinting off it’s eyes and making them shine a medley of colours.

‘Do you believe in the Grim, Percy?’ Kingsley asked slowly, wand levelled at the dog. The Grim came to within six feet of them and sat, head tilted curiously. It was two thirds the height of Percy, who considered himself rather gangly.

‘I didn’t,’ Percy replied.

The Grim barked in a clipped, short way. Percy and Kingsley, for their shame, flinched.

‘Now I think about it,’ Kingsley began in the same steady voice, ‘it actually –’

The grim stood sharply and rose on it’s hind legs, growing taller and taller, getting more and more pale before it’s shaggy hair moved inwards, and –

‘Kingsley!’ Sirius Black hissed, wrapping fur around himself hurriedly. ‘I’ve got no wand, I – Percy? Percy Weasley? Where’s everyone, where’s Harry –?’

‘Stupefy!’ Kingsley said firmly, and Percy remembered he used to be an auror. Sirius Black crumpled to the floor, limbs weighted and flailing, shocked expression staying on his face.

‘That’s bought us some time.’ He said to Percy, turning to face him properly. Kingsley looked shaken. Percy was too, and he hadn’t even known the man. ‘Let’s get … whoever this is, to a holding room.’


	2. Interview with a Convict

Lily decided to have a tantrum in the minutes preceding the floo call, though Harry wasn’t to know the importance of what was coming. She stood in front of the fireplace in navy blue pyjamas, arms crossed tightly over her chest, scowling at Harry.

‘I don’t see why I have to get up early tomorrow to clean the broomshed.’ She said angrily. Harry rolled his shoulders out. He glanced to his left and saw Ginny, reclined on the sofa, suspiciously engrossed in a book about different ways to upcycle old broomstick parts.

‘It’s ten o’clock, you won’t be tired if you go to bed now rather than argue –’

‘That’s not the _point_!’ Lily’s arms flailed. ‘I’m not the only one who uses it, but _I’m_ the only one that has to clean it, and _I_ have to get up early to do it when I can do it _just_ as well after lunch! Or not at all!’

‘You’ll have all the rest of the day to do whatever you want to!’ Harry pleaded with a heavy sigh, watching Ginny grin in his periphery.

‘James and Al are probably going to be playing Quidditch tomorrow while _I_ have to clean up _their_ mess.’ Lily said acidly. ‘Or they’ll be in Hogsmeade, or eating twenty chocolate frogs, or sleeping, or –’

‘Harry,’ came a deep voice from behind Lily, who shrieked in surprise. Ginny’s book jumped out of her hands and landed heavily on her stomach. She yelped.

Harry looked at his daughter as he moved around her to get to the fireplace. She was desperately trying to regain the momentum she had before interrupted. Ginny was sitting up on the sofa, book forgotten and wedged between her hip and the back cushion.

‘Kingsley? What’s happening?’ Harry asked, crouching so close he could feel the flames warm up the metal of his glasses as they licked heat into the living room.

‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t give you details over the floo. But we need you in.’ Kingsley said, voice and face unreadable.

‘Okay. I’ll be with you in fifteen.’ frowning, Harry reared back from the furnace and rose up, eye line with the picture of his wedding day. He knew Kingsley wouldn’t call him in if it wasn’t something relatively serious. Kingsley could handle plenty without Harry’s help to begin with.

‘Harry –’ Kingsley said, even though Harry had thought the conversation was over. ‘I’ll warn you now. It’s very personal. Best make it more like five or ten minutes.’

While Kingsley left, the flames regaining their ground, Harry looked sideways at Ginny who was staring back at him. ‘Lily, go to bed,’ Ginny said stiffly, never moving her eyes from Harry’s.

Huffing, Lily stomped up the stairs muttering to herself. Harry could feel her glare burning into the side of his head as she disappeared behind the bannister. He didn’t have time to be frustrated about how she immediately listened to her mother, or how Ginny had clearly enjoyed not stepping into the conversation beforehand because they both stopped to listen, with the utmost concentration, for the required 23 steps it would take their daughter to be safely in her room and not spying on them and their conversation.

Door shut, Ginny rubbed her eyes. They both remembered the last time this had happened, back when Ron was his partner and had been badly splinched. ‘What do you think he needs you for?’

Harry couldn’t think why. He was Head Auror, so it was easy to assume this was a more common occurrence than it actually was. But, his authority came with the fact that it was normally _Harry_ who got people to come in on days off because of emergencies, and he who would take himself to the office out of hours either of his own volition or if one of the aurors had called him. His meetings with the Minister were scheduled and often, and usually in normal working hours.

If Kingsley couldn’t deal with whatever the issue was himself, and if none of the highly-skilled, intelligent and talented aurors on duty in Harry’s team could deal with it either…

‘Haven’t a clue,’ Harry said finally, eyes focusing again.

‘What’s personal about it?’

‘Merlin knows,’ Harry replied. He frowned. ‘You shouldn’t have heard that.’

‘Shut up.’ Ginny rolled her eyes. ‘You better get going.’

‘You should take the Statute for the Prevention of Endangering Highly Secret Information more seriously,’ Harry shouted over his shoulder as he walked away from her and towards the back door where he had shucked off his shoes earlier that day.

* * *

The water of the Fountain of Magical Brethren danced only for an audience of one as Harry walked past it quickly. The tapping of his shoes was drowned out by the white noise of it, and he just about spotted his own reflection in the frozen sweep of the wizard’s cloak.

The fountain had been restored to the grandeur Harry had seen when he first visited the Ministry for his trial, with the exception of a tricky little charm that allowed the flowing water to crash soundlessly into the waiting pool below without causing so much as a ripple. Names of the dead from the last century were carved into the base of the pool, glowing from the light that bounced off the water that might just as well have been glass. There were no coins gathering at the bottom; as soon as they came a breath too close to the surface they disappeared to a pot in the reception of St Mungo’s, not dissimilar to the house point hourglasses at Hogwarts.

Names spanning those murdered in Grindelwald’s first months to those present at the final fight at Hogwarts were readable from metres away if the reader so chose. There were no birth years or death dates – the latter was often too much of a luxury for the family to know of, and indeed too many people had simply never been found again. In a strange turn of freakish luck, Harry’s parents and Fred Weasley’s names were clustered together directly under the raised hooves of the centaur.

Hermione was unhappy with the fountain being restored exactly as it was – Harry, too, found it quite unsavoury, the way the house elf, goblin and centaur looked so awed at the witch and wizard – but there were Wizengamots to pacify, and Mugwumps to please.

The watch wizard stared glassy-eyed at Harry as usual as he weighed his wand. ‘Holly,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Phoenix feather, eleven and a half inches.’

‘What?’ Harry asked, stopping in his tracks mid-stride.

The wizard turned slowly, daydreaming disrupted as he scowled and shrugged dismissively. ‘Your wand.’

Harry stared at him, mouth hanging open slightly. Surely not… his wand had always been eleven inches exactly. He looked at it in his hand as he stumbled away towards a lift. It didn’t look any different, or feel odd. It seemed the same as it always did, not unbalanced by an extra half-inch.

Could wands just simply change? Harry thought angrily, not wanting to dwell on something such as this when he had no idea about the situation he was walking into.

‘Level Two,’ Harry asked the lift, still frowning and staring at his wand by the time he arrived at his destination. The smooth voice announced he was at the Department for Magical Law Enforcement.

The gates were still rattling open when the pale face of Roan Williamson, who was not on night duty this evening, seized Harry’s sleeve. ‘He’s over here,’ he said to Harry, brusquely leading him around the corner where Kingsley’s tall figure was talking to Amber and Laurence Fogs, a brother and sister who were both aurors and remarkably good at identifying poisons and potions. Both Kingsley and their matching protruding chins turned to Harry, stopping their conversation in an instant.

Unsettled, Harry glanced at Williamson and back again. Kingsley was unreadable, but everyone else loitering around the department looked apprehensive at his entrance.

‘Having a party without me?’ Harry offered the room lightly, trying to alleviate the clogging atmosphere. He was answered only with blinks and grimaces. Never had they looked so on edge, and never had the night shift been so packed.

‘Harry,’ Kingsley said, gesturing to the breakroom behind him. Harry followed, and saw him shoot the room at large with a searing look that seemed to translate into some kind of instruction; Harry’s colleagues began bustling about with the pretence of purpose.

Harry’s eyes slid away from Kingsley rapping his wand on the door to lock itself, to the stained sofa against the back wall which housed a sickly looking Percy Weasley.

‘Percy!’ Harry said in shock, blinking. Percy looked back quickly, mouth opening and eyes turning immediately to Kingsley. His hands rubbed anxiously at his robes.

‘Sit down, Harry,’ Kingsley said, sighing, turning around to make a pot of tea. ‘It was Percy and I that got everyone in.’

Harry very much doubted Percy had been doing much of anything. His glasses were askew and he gripped the tea Kingsley gave him loosely. He kept glancing back and forth between him and Harry, looking unsure of what to say. He settled on nothing at all.

‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked immediately. ‘It can’t be too bad or you would have had me in before now, not everyone in the department _except_ me…’

‘Like I said, it’s personal. We thought we might be able to sort it out without your help but, well,’ Kingsley sat heavily opposite Harry, ‘you do have a talent for the weird and wonderful.’

Harry’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why is it weird? Why is it personal?’

Kingsley and Percy exchanged glances. ‘What you’ve got to understand is, it’s very realistic.’ Percy said cryptically, rubbing his nose.

‘What is?’

‘We were working late,’ Kingsley said, ‘and suddenly there’s a big black dog at the end of the corridor.’

‘The Grim?’ Harry laughed, slapping his hand on the table in delight.

‘It wasn’t just a dog!’ Percy said fiercely. ‘It started out like a dog, like the Grim, but then it changed and – and it was a man!’

Harry’s smile died. He looked back and forth at Percy and Kingsley. ‘You’re telling me it’s personal… because –’

‘Sirius,’ Kingsley confirmed. He shook his head. ‘I stared at his face for months on end, I’d know what his face looked like even if I hadn’t seen him outside of work all the time. They looked exactly like him.’

Harry’s mind wandered back to seeing Kingsley’s cubicle on the same day he had first seen the fountain. He remembered the glaring face of his godfather staring out at all angles in newspaper clippings and between maps.

‘Well – it can’t be.’ Harry said simply, staring. His heart beat wildly. ‘We all know he’s dead.’

‘Yes,’ Kingsley said slowly, eyeing Harry cautiously. ‘But we can’t find any evidence of trickery just yet. It would be easier if whoever it was just talked.’

There was a long pause. ‘So you think they want to talk to me, on account of dressing up as my dead godfather.’ Harry said bluntly, anger simmering as Percy twitched. Kingsley nodded, looking at Harry steadily over his sip of tea.

‘Well,’ Harry said, running his hands through his hair. ‘All right. Okay. At least it’s not the kids. Right. Which, uh – which room?’

‘You’re going in with someone. Williamson.’ Kinglsye replied, brows creasing. Harry rolled his eyes.

‘Fine. Which room?’

‘Seven.’

As they walked – the four of them, Percy looking unsure if he should be present – the eyes of Harry’s department followed. It was only a short journey to the holding rooms, shorter even to number seven which was on the end of the corridor. Dawlish stood grumpily outside the door, hair ruffled and arms crossed resolutely over his chest.

‘Finally decided to join us?’ He said nastily to Harry, who rolled his eyes and ignored him.

‘Here?’ He asked, turning his back to Dawlish who scowled. Williamson, similarly ignoring his colleague, nodded.

‘He’s calmed down,’ he said quietly. ‘But I expect he’ll get a bit – you know – when he sees you.’

‘That’s fine,’ Harry grimaced. ‘They’re usually like that with me.’ Dark wizards and witches were never particularly happy when Harry Potter stepped into the room to ask them why they were skulking around a Muggle-born Ministry official’s home at three in the morning.

Kingsley looked Harry straight in the eyes. ‘Stay calm.’ He said. Harry felt protestations bubbling up in his throat, and Kingsley must have known because he continued; ‘I know you’re not fifteen anymore, I know you’re head of the department and a father and all that now. But it’s a very realistic disguise.’ He shrugged with his palms upwards in a _Look, I’m just warning_ _you_ gesture.

Harry nodded reluctantly, feeling chastised and as if he was being given detention. Percy clapped him lightly on the shoulder behind him as Harry signalled to Williamson to open the door.

Stepping inside, Harry’s breath caught in his throat. There he was, in the flesh. He wasn’t as bad as he had been after being on the run for months, and he wasn’t in perfect full health as Harry had often wondered he could’ve been. He was the same as the day Harry had last seen him, merely in borrowed robes and with a haggard, stressed look on his face Harry had never witnessed before.

He – whoever it was – looked wildly at them entering with dark eyes. He focused on Harry, as those in his seat (chained to it) always did. Harry sat down opposite him as smoothly as he could. Williamson blocked the door.

‘Hello,’ Harry said as pleasantly as he could muster. ‘I understand you managed to break into the Ministry this evening. Well done. You did quite well to stay unseen for as long as you did.’

Opposite him, fake-Sirius looked desperately confused. ‘Where are the others?’

‘There’s more of you?’

‘Well – yes,’ not-Sirius said, ‘with Dumbledore? You must have seen them by now, they weren’t in the Department where I left them so they must have moved, I was looking for them when –’ He stopped and looked closely at Harry’s face. His jaw dropped. ‘ _Harry?!_ ’

‘I am rather famous,’ Harry said, trying hard to ignore the look on their face, the ache he felt when they said his name with Sirius’ voice. Williamson shuffled in the background. ‘You’re telling me there’s someone disguised as Dumbledore running about the Ministry? In the same way you’re dressed as Sirius Black?’

To be fair to whoever it was, Harry thought, they were doing an excellent job of playing dumb. He wasn’t sure why they were pretending to do so because they had clearly gotten what they wanted – Harry’s audience – and he couldn’t understand what other purpose there was for running around as Sirius. Even if that wasn’t their purpose, acting as if they didn’t know who Harry was despite dressing as his godfather was a bit misguided.

‘I – I _am_ Sirius Black.’ They said. ‘I thought you were here to put me back! But – Harry, is that you?’

‘Put you back where?’ Harry interrupted. ‘Prison? Azkaban?’

The fake-Sirius looked at him oddly. They spoke slowly. ‘Yes … of course, Azkaban.’

‘Well, I must say, I’ve never had someone we’ve caught be quite so upfront before. It’s very refreshing.’ Harry felt riled up by this confusion… it annoyed him more than it should have and crawled under his skin and lodged there. He tried to handle his anger as he had so often before in situations similar.

‘Harry, why do you look… different,’ not-Sirius asked. He was paling rapidly. ‘You look much more like James now –’

Harry recoiled from the man physically, chair screeching with the effort on the cheap flooring. ‘ _Excuse me_?’ He hissed. This was a turn he had not expected. Williamson coughed behind him, as a reminder of his presence.

‘Harry, everyone tells you that. Everyone.’

‘I admire your commitment to the act,’ Harry said, trying to convince his muscles to ease up and let go of their tension, trying to convince his fists to unwind, trying to become professional again.

‘I’m not acting!’ Not-Sirius said fiercely. ‘I am here because He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named made you think he had me, and you and your friends – kids! – decided to handle it yourselves!’ His eyes slid to Williamson for a second, and Harry knew he was assessing him somehow.

‘You know we’ve been guarding _it_ for a while,’ He was leaning as far as he could in his chains, trying to get closer to Harry who refused to move. His eyes flickered to Williamson again. ‘One moment I’m fighting Bellatrix Lestrange, and next thing I know everyone’s gone and Kingsley’s casting –’

‘ _Enough_.’ Harry said darkly. ‘I’m not sure how you know how Sirius Black died, or the circumstances around it. But I’m sure if you asked the right people, it wouldn’t be too hard to find out. But I want to know just _why_ you are impersonating a man who has been dead for years. A cheap shot at me? A message?’

Fake-Sirius stared at him slack-jawed. ‘Dead?’ He whispered. ‘You think I’m dead? I’m here! I should be asking you why you look the way _you_ do – surely you can’t be Harry! It’s not right – you’re not right –’

‘If it weren’t already obvious,’ Harry said angrily, ‘you are not in a position to be asking questions at the moment.’

‘I want to know where my godson is!’ Not-Sirius said, voice rising with each word. ‘I want to know he’s all right!’

‘ _I am Harry Potter!_ ’ Harry thundered, standing up violently and taking a few steps away from the chair. He thought about Kingsley looking in, watching, most likely highly disappointed. Harry closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, trying and failing to blame his reactions on the time of day.

‘If you’re Harry Potter,’ Not-Sirius said, sounding just as angry as Harry felt, nothing left to lose now he was caught, clearly; ‘tell me about Buckbeak! Tell me about when you got me out of Flitwick’s office and I said you were just like your dad and I told your friend Hermione that she was an incredibly bright witch and how I accidentally broke Ron’s leg earlier on that night, and –’

Harry failed to exhale the deep breath he had just taken. It was caught in his stomach which had dropped miles. He looked at Williamson, who looked nonplussed and uncomfortable, like he was intruding. With great effort Harry turned back to not-Sirius stiffly who was still ranting.

‘How do you know about that night?’ He asked quietly, scared to move an inch. The chains were the only noise as they rattled alongside their prisoner turning to stare back, voice dying in their throat.

‘I was _there_ ,’ the fake snapped back.

Light-headed, feeling as if he was surely missing something because everything had moved so fast and escalated so quickly, Harry turned to Williamson. He felt cold sweat bead on his forehead.

‘We need to speak to Kingsley again.’ He said. Williamson nodded in a non-committal way which bordered on a shrug, generally looking relieved to get out of the situation.

They both turned to the door. Not-Sirius was rattling his chains and shouting after them, confused and angry. Harry spun on his heel, ignoring the silent people outside the door, pointing his index finger at the man in the chair. He stopped shouting when Harry turned.

Harry flailed around trying to find something to say. He wasn’t sure what he wanted it to be. He floundered with non-words and phrases, random beginnings of sentences leaving his mouth before he settled, frustrated, on – ‘Fuck!’


	3. After Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are two more people than usual roaming the Ministry.

‘Got you rattled, didn’t he Potter?’ Dawlish said before Harry could react. Harry sent him a filthy look and told him to fuck off – Dawlish did so, skulking away with a thunderous expression when Kingsley looked pointedly in the opposite direction.

‘This was a mistake.’ Kingsley’s arms were crossed and he was leaning against the wall directly opposite the door. Harry sighed.

‘We’ve got to search for this other Dumbledore,’ said Harry, desperately trying to move the conversation onwards. Kingsley didn’t look keen on helping him at all.

Percy’s worried ginger head appeared from behind Kingsley’s shoulder. ‘How did he have that information Harry?’

‘I don’t know,’ Harry replied, ‘but he’s got accomplices running around, apparently. We don’t need someone outside this department coming across Albus Dumbledore, for God’s sake.’

Kingsley eyed Harry before speaking. Harry felt quite distinctly that the conversation Kingsley clearly wanted to have with him was merely shelved for the time being rather than binned completely. He was not looking forward to it.

‘The Ministry is empty, it’s getting close to Midnight.’ He said. ‘We’re lucky. I’ll alert the watch wizards. Harry – sort your lot out.’

As Kingsley strode away, Harry was thankful he wasn’t at all like Fudge had been. Then, Harry doubted he would be in his job at all if Fudge was still strutting around as Minister.

‘Are you all right?’ Percy asked Harry quietly. He looked tired and stressed without his glasses on. He was cleaning them on the sleeve of his robe neurotically as he looked at Harry.

Harry shrugged and looked away. He wasn’t all right, really – he had spoken to a horrifying representation of his dead godfather. He had been faced with all the parts of Sirius that he had forgotten over time; his tiredness and his voice and the anger that always tightened the corners of his eyes. Harry felt guilty at forgetting these things, insulting Sirius’ memory in some way… even if this man wasn’t really him. If this was meant to get to Harry, then it was working. He hadn’t felt this itchy under the skin since the first days of patrolling Azkaban, with all the Death Eaters shouting vile threats against Ginny and, eventually, their children too.

‘We’d best get back to the others,’ Harry said, avoiding Percy’s eyes. ‘You should go back home, really.’

Percy blinked at him. He tried again. ‘You’re not qualified, Perce… we don’t know what’s going on and they’re probably dangerous. You’re a politician, not an Auror.’

A moment of stillness. Percy’s face was immovable. Somehow, Harry thought he had gone too far.

‘I take my orders from the Minister himself,’ Percy said eventually, some of his youthful pompousness leaking through the words, ‘not from you Harry, I’m afraid – Head Auror or not.’

He turned on his heel and started off in Kingsley’s footsteps.

Harry emerged sheepishly behind Percy. Harry could see that the emotions he’d been feeling had already drained from his face.

Harry’s department were loitering in various states of disarray – Roberta Burbage’s eyepatch was off kilter as she was talking to the Fogs siblings, and Thomas Cresswell’s robe-hem was tucked into a dirty sock that extended out from his cubicle. The only two with bright eyes were Dawlish and Jean Fawley. Jean, in a transparent effort to escape Dawlish’s unseasonably bad waspishness, was closely monitoring a cluster of teas and coffees as they brewed. Harry caught the tail end of her conversation with Thomas; she was complaining about the night shift.

The rest, still bleary and sitting in silence, turned to Harry the moment he walked in. ‘The Minister’s just gone to talk to Albert and the others,’ Morgan Vance said helpfully to Harry, a large knot of hair resting behind her ear. Harry nodded, guessing she was referring to the watch wizards. Morgan had an uncanny ability with faces _and_ names which didn’t alarm as many as it would if she did not have the same temperament as Pigwidgeon.

‘We have reason to believe there’s another imposter in the Ministry.’ He said to the room at large. Thomas sat up quickly (Harry thought he might have been dozing off) and Proudfoot, who refused to allow his first name to be spoken aloud, sighed heavily.

‘So he _is_ an imposter,’ she said evenly, staring at Harry.

‘What else could he be?’

‘Well… practically everyone in the department is here,’ Roan Williamson said as Calder Savage nodded next to him. ‘We just thought…’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Savage said at the same time. He shared an uneasy look with Williamson.

‘Just because we haven’t found out the _how_ yet means nothing,’ Harry said firmly as Percy’s gaze bored into him. ‘It’s been a matter of hours… Amber, Laurence, anything?’

The brother and sister shook their heads in unison. Harry often thought it odd they weren’t born twins. ‘We’ve checked for all the usual, but no luck,’ said Laurence.

In the brief lull after he spoke, Winnie and Rupert walked in, laughing at the jaunty angle Rupert’s collar was sitting at. They stopped still when they read the room, staring at Harry who was becoming uncharacteristically frustrated.

‘Warren! Fisher!’ Harry barked, ‘We need you back out – there, wherever you’ve been. You can keep watch in the Atrium.’

Neither argued, yet both looked put out about being put on guard duty with the grumpy wizard who had weighed Harry’s wand. Harry felt immediately sorry for his own unfairness.

He continued, calmer; ‘Dawlish and Fawley, stay here – you’re on the night shift anyway… Amber, Laurence, check the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, who knows what they keep up there, an antidote might come in handy…

‘Proudfoot, best see if they’re going to try and make a break for it, try Transport with Williamson … it’s unlikely but if they manage to get their hands on a portkey, well… and there’s a few lines of communication to other countries on Level Five, so Cresswell and Vance, you check there…’

Harry wanted to look in the Department of Mysteries himself, but he thought it would be tempting fate to wander around down there. It was also looking like Percy was going to be his back-up in this – no matter what he said, Harry wasn’t sure how years of paperwork would help a wizard hone his duelling reflexes.

‘Burbage and Savage, you head to the Department of Mysteries,’ Harry announced. ‘Remember to keep an eye out around the courtrooms, it’s a maze down there. And I don’t think I need to tell you to keep any body parts you’re especially attached to away from their weird experiments. Don’t go in too deep.

‘We – Percy and I – will be covering Level One and Two… imposter number two might try and break their pal out, and it’s Percy’s workplace after all…’

As always, Harry’s speech petered out without fanfare. Expectant faces changed to nods and shrugs and reluctant shuffling. Wands were drawn begrudgingly.

‘Stay alert!’ Harry shouted over the clanking noise as they paired up and left, one of the lifts already rattling away. Harry heard distantly a frantic Winnie and Rupert pleading with Laurence Fogs to let them know what on earth was going on.

* * *

Eventually Harry and Percy made their way to the lifts; eerie in the new-born silence where everything echoed twofold. Their departure left a dismayed Jean staring at her new mug collection and a simmering Dawlish with his arms crossed watching them walk away.

The light of Percy’s desk lamp shone from the end of the corridor, near Kingsley’s office. Neither made a motion towards it; they turned away from the Minister’s office and began walking slowly towards the sea of desks that appeared grey in the dull lights.

‘Can we switch the light on?’ Percy asked lowly, his wand light flickering for a fraction of a second.

‘No, Percy,’ Harry sighed.

They moved slowly around the outside of the room, not because of suspicion but in respect of the quietness of night-time. Percy’s hair seemed to be the only colour in the landscape (speckles of grey aside) and even that was washed out to look sickly.

They had just reached a mountainous filing cabinet when Percy stood up straighter and shuffled a little. ‘Are you going to tell me how you think he knew those things, Harry?’

‘How could I know that? You know just as much as I do. Why do you mind so much? That’s the second time you’ve asked me.’

‘I just think it’s odd. You do too – I can tell. It’s not as if how he escaped Azkaban is common knowledge, is it? Let alone escaping that second time. Even I didn’t know. You three are hardly big talkers.’

‘I can’t really be discussing this with you,’ Harry said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t exactly lying, but he certainly would be if he claimed he didn’t divulge all sorts of information that was _technically_ sensitive to Ginny, or Ron and Hermione… and sometimes George or Teddy…

Harry was beginning to remember why he usually aimed to be at the other end of the table from Percy at Christmas. If it wasn’t legislation that even Hermione found dry in the face of turkey and Christmas crackers, his conversation was a strange mix of pomposity and eagerness. Harry desperately wished Ron or Neville were still Aurors so they could be here rather than Percy, and then felt immediately guilty for thinking about how much he liked to avoid his brother-in-law – and how adept he usually was at it too – and vowed to be more patient. Even in the face of annoyance that he had to watch Percy’s back should anything actually happen. Even if that didn’t look likely.

Percy was unperturbed. ‘Well we must talk about something while we’re here. Do you know where Kingsley is?’

_Why couldn’t they just talk about the kids?_ Harry pleaded privately. Then – ‘no idea. Perhaps tracking down the watch wizards, I’ve heard they tend to wander about a bit on the night shift to wake themselves up.’

‘Shouldn’t you know where he is, in case? As Head Auror?’ Percy said in a weighted tone. ‘What if it’s someone with Dumbledore’s power, or even, well—’

‘Merlin’s balls, Percy, how could be Dumbledore? And Kingsley can hold his own. He _was_ an Auror. And have you ever tried forcing him to wait before getting in on the action? No chance.’

‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ Percy said coolly. ‘I am a key advisor of his.’

Dully, Harry kicked himself. They walked in silence for a further uncomfortable five minutes. Harry desperately wracked his brains for something to say that was unrelated to anything immediately important.

‘My wand changed.’

‘What?’

‘My wand. It was eleven inches but now it’s eleven and a half.’

‘Well, surely you’ve just made a mistake.’

‘For twenty-odd years? Come on, Perce.’

Harry and Percy turned to look at each other head-on. ‘There’s barely any records of things like that happening. Hardly any at all.’

Alarmed, Harry shone his wand directly into Percy’s face where he spluttered as he was blinded. ‘It’s happened before!’ Harry said loudly, ‘there’s records!’

‘They’re so old they’re barely in English, I’m sure,’ Percy hissed hand batting away the wand in question. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for them.’

‘What does it mean?’ Harry asked quickly, hoping it was merely an odd wizarding quirk that he had never learnt about.

‘Well, _I_ don’t know,’ said Percy, blinking, ‘Haven’t seen the records, have I?’ Harry gritted his teeth against the frustration that bubbled up in his throat. What was it with bookish people, always knowing things but never enough to actually be useful?

Echoing footsteps rolled out from the gloom where Harry and Percy had been before, interrupting Percy’s next words. They both raised their wands and turned on their heels, eyes swinging wildly from side to side.

It was Jean, heaving between breaths. ‘They said – get you soon as – new ones – not Dumbledore – portkey office—’

‘How many?’ Harry said.

‘Two,’

She raised two fingers to illustrate at the same time Percy exclaimed ‘that was quick!’

By the time the three of them made it back to the Auror Headquarters, Jean was on the verge of an asthma attack, Percy’s face was redder than Auror robes and Harry was breathing far too heavily with his glasses slipping down his nose to boot. They stumbled into the office where Harry had sent everyone off from before, to find organised chaos.

On the floor covered in ropes was a shouting woman with blonde hair and dark eyes. She looked as if she had only just been bound; Kingsley was standing over her with a grim set to his mouth and his wand pointed at her head.

Another man was backed into a corner facing the wands of Roberta (eyepatch askew), Williamson (collar ripped) and Dawlish (untouched but still looking the most wary). To Harry, he seemed below average height with a large nose and red hair. He looked confused over anything else, which was uncommon in those Aurors usually arrested who always knew they were up to no good.

‘We found them in the portkey office!' said Proudfoot who was sitting off to the side, hand to his face and glaring at the man. ‘He got a good bloody punch in when we found them too,’ his hand came away with spots of blood.

‘You can’t jump out at someone like that in times like this!’ The man shouted back from his corner. The woman on the floor stopped shouting to look around. ‘What are you lot coming at me for? Where’s my brother?’

Everyone looked around uneasily.

‘I’m sure you know why,’ Harry said as he approached him, standing only feet away from the man next to Dawlish. The man’s eyes searched the room briefly before locking eyes with Harry where his own widened.

‘Blimey James, you’re looking rough! Why are you here? I thought you were in hiding!’

Harry looked at Kingsley, who looked back at him. All eyes alternated between Harry and the man in the corner as Harry looked around at the woman on the floor. She was staring solely at harry, mouth slightly open.

Above her, Percy had been looming, looking over her face with a crease between his eyebrows. Now, he was pale and looked ill as he stared at her companion.

‘Merlin’s Beard,’ Percy babbled, ‘that’s – that’s – oh my -’ one hand on his wand, Harry rubbed his forehead in aggravation with the other.

‘Oi!’ the man shouted into the quiet, ‘Why d’you have my watch?’

‘ _My uncle,_ ’ Percy finished weakly. Kingsley swore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not particularly happy with this chapter but I have uploaded it because a) I probably never will be, b) this is supposed to be fun, after all, and c) I don’t want to keep you waiting.
> 
> It just feels a bit too quick and a bit too full of lists. Clunky. And there’s too much Percy and not enough Ron and Hermione and Ginny.
> 
> Having said that, I do really hope you do find something in it to enjoy though.


	4. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione's research skills pay off.

When Harry crawled into bed he lay as if he was in his coffin, grumpily deciding there was hardly any point in getting undressed at all. He knew he would be back at work earlier than he would ever be happy with, and going to sleep would be tantalising.

Instead, as grey light filtered through the curtains, Harry thought about the insanity, and about his brother-in-law. Percy Weasley was not a quiet man; Harry knew this from when they first met and continued on to become teenagers, adults, and fathers. Percy was never one to hold back and always had something to say. He might not shout as loudly as his siblings, but on his face was every thought.

But Percy had been quiet as they took the man that looked like his uncle into a cell (squinting, asking Percy if they knew each other and if they were cousins, because his nephews were only small). His face sagged, became limp, and his entire body wilted.

‘My uncle,’ he had whispered. Kingsley explained the pair looked like Fabian Prewett and Marlene McKinnon. He recognised them distantly.

‘Don’t eat the Christmas tree, Kreacher,’ Ginny mumbled next to him. Harry looked over and smiled.

He had somehow avoided waking her up. She had gone to sleep as she so often did: propped up on the headboard in a slouch. Her hair was straight at the front and a mess at the back because of it, and Harry had to silently slip her wand out of her hand before she started firing off curses in her dream world. _Constant vigilance_ , he thought with a grin.

Breakfast brought a sulking daughter and a tired Ginny drinking stronger than usual tea in a large hand-painted mug.

‘I can’t believe you won’t tell me what’s going on,’ she hissed at Harry when he reached over to pass her the sugar. Harry shrugged sheepishly, not sure if he should feel so guilty about upholding the requirement of secrecy for once.

‘You’re going back so early.’ Ginny said across the table with narrowed eyes as Lily looked back and forth.

‘Something’s come up,’ Harry said unhelpfully. He could hardly tell his wife someone pretending to be an uncle she’d never met – had they met? Surely she wouldn’t remember if they had? – was sitting feet away from his office, next door to, apparently, his Godfather.

Ginny stopped complaining after she finished her first mug, and was back to normal by her second. She still eyed him out of the corner of her eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking, and Harry knew she was searching for signs of distress or intensity. Harry had worked through these things in the time he spent staring at the grey and drizzly morning, and was now filled with determination rather than anger.

‘I’m going to see Hermione first thing,’ he said conversationally as he shoved his arms in his robes. He admired Ginny’s restraint to merely raise her eyebrow and say nothing more.

‘Have fun,’ she said wryly, accepting his kiss and murmured _love you_.

‘Right, Lily, get dressed up warm, it’s cold out there!’ Harry heard Ginny say brightly to the living room at large as their daughter trod quietly up the stairs behind her in pyjamas, scowling at being caught.

* * *

Harry strode into Hermione’s office without knocking, as he usually did. As always, she jolted, her quill this time sent skittering to the opposite side of her desk. It collided with a stack of parchment as she glared at Harry.

‘What?’ Hermione asked, retrieving her quill. ‘What is it this time?’

‘It’s actually quite urgent—’

‘It’s always urgent,’ Hermione sighed. ‘Well then. Hugo.’

‘Hugo?’ Harry said, nonplussed, before his nephew clambered upright from the corner of the room where he had been crouched.

‘Hello, Uncle Harry,’ he said quietly, gripping a book that was several times larger than his head. He and Harry stared at each other for a moment before Harry turned to Hermione for an answer.

‘He’s not very well,’ she said. Hugo shrugged, not looking very convinced of his own ill health. ‘Ron’s had to put out some fires at work, so—’

‘Actual fires?’ Harry said, alarmed.

‘Honestly Harry, I don’t ask questions about the shop anymore.’ She said primly. Hugo had moved to the side of her desk and she tenderly swept some of his curly hair from his eyes. His nose wrinkled in disgust at the affront.

‘You look all right to me,’ Harry said cheerfully to his nephew. Hugo shrugged again. ‘Not reading that book we gave you for Christmas?’ He tried again, reading the large spine Hugo gripped – _Hoax and Dreams in Swamps and Streams_.

‘I’ve already gone through it twice,’ Hugo replied, suddenly coming alive. ‘But it didn’t mention enough about toxipology (‘ _toxicology_ ,’ Hermione added) so I’m reading about how someone went to some swamps and even found some _new_ newts—’

Hugo was in the midst of a newt and salamander phase, which was only marginally better than his previous garden gnome one. Ron was excited at the prospect of the newly inevitable dragon episode, having experience with the direction these things usually took. He had already written to Charlie for some dragon teeth to gift to Hugo for his tenth birthday, as well as Hagrid for any stories about Norberta. Harry and Ginny had already received the ‘suggestion’ of giving Hugo the encyclopaedic _From Egg to Inferno: A Dragon Keeper’s Guide_.

‘Hugo,’ Hermione interrupted firmly, ‘Why don’t you have a look around the records room?’

Hugo looked irritated but not unwilling. He huffed and marked his place in his book by folding the page almost in half.

‘Down the corridor and—’ Hermione said.

‘—To the left, I know.’ He replied, rolling his eyes and looking very much like Ron. He rattled out of the room without a backward glance and Harry laughed at his fading voice; ‘Yeah, Mum’s kicked me out again, Mrs Higgs – no, my uncle – okay, only a digestive though, I want to look at the N section—’

Hermione looked very sheepish when her office door closed with a tinny click. They both knew children weren’t really allowed to loiter around the Ministry, and the fact she was a known war hero likely had something to do with Hugo’s presence.

‘I won’t tell if you don’t ask any questions,’ Harry offered. Hermione only got more wary.

‘You wouldn’t tell anyway,’ she said grumpily, ‘I’ve seen you smuggling biscuits to your children under the cloak far too many times. What is it? Is it serious?’

‘No questions!’ Harry insisted. Hermione rolled her eyes and gestured helplessly for him to continue. ‘I’m stuck on a method to disprove someone’s identity. A way to prove they’re not who they say they are.’

Hermione raised her eyebrows and sat back in her chair. Her wedding rings clicked against a button on her blazer. Harry simultaneously felt like he was in detention with McGonagall and was also one of Hermione’s children being told off for eating sweets before dinner.

‘Look, I’m sorry Harry, but I’ve really got to ask – why do you need me to prove someone wrong on their own identity?’

‘Well they can’t be who they say they are.’ Hermione looked at him disapprovingly. ‘It’s all hushed up at the moment, I can’t tell you more.’

‘You shouldn’t be here at all, in that case,’ Hermione scolded. But – Harry saw the new glimmer in her eyes.

‘I assume you’ve tried Veritaserum?’

‘No point. Too much paperwork to get permission and they might think they’re really who they say they are.’

‘Potions tests? All of them?’

‘All clear.’

‘And you’re certain they’re just not … who they say they are?’

‘Hermione.’

The clicking restarted as she thought in silence. Harry flicked his wand against his leg to the time of an old muggle song he remembered growing up with.

‘There’s not much to work with in the first place,’ Hermione said slowly. ‘The only thing I can think of is a Muggle DNA test, but somehow I don’t think you would be able to get that past those old warlocks on the board … let alone get blood from whoever it is even if you did …’

Harry cursed himself for battling so hard for rules and regulations and the separation of powers in the past. He wished, not for the first time, he could be a renegade like Mad-Eye. He would even accept the eye.

Hermione shifted, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘There is something,’ she said lowly, eyes flickering to her door. ‘It’s not really spoken of, nobody wants to touch it, understandable really … but it’s all I can give you at the moment.’

Harry nodded eagerly, wild fantasies of voyaging to some forgotten temple and discovering a dusty relic with truth-telling powers flitted through his mind. Then he remembered he was in his thirties, was a government official, and was very tired.

‘You remember those awful trials they had, during the war?’

‘With Umbridge?’ Hermione winced, and nodded.

‘Well, towards the end – not that they knew it was, of course – Voldemort and his followers were working on some kind of test to actually prove who was Muggleborn and who was lying … they didn’t trust people weren’t doing what Colin and Dennis Creevey were doing, you remember? Pretending to be the cousins of Purebloods? They didn’t want to just take their word for it … didn’t want to have to hold trials anymore. I suppose they thought it would be easier to just test everyone and have done with it …

‘The thing is, they actually got rather far.’ Hermione sighed and took steadying breath. She looked very uncomfortable, and Harry knew she hadn’t spoken of this to anyone in years – perhaps ever. ‘They couldn’t prove if someone was a Muggleborn, exactly, but they could prove whether they were related to who they said they were … I think it traced back shared magic in families. Remarkably similar to a Muggle DNA test, really.’

Harry withdrew from the circle of bowed heads they had made for themselves, breath leaving his body in a low, drawn out expulsion. He was thankful in that moment, so thankful, that the war had ended when it did, that the few Muggleborns who had managed to lie their way to safety weren’t caught …

‘How did they test people?’ Harry asked, unsure if he wanted to know, imagining torturous experiments.

‘Blood,’ Hermione said quietly.

She looked suddenly older than her years. Harry’s mind went back, as it always did, to the cave with Dumbledore. He thought of the power a wizard could hold over another with their blood to hand. He thought of the horrible possibilities it would have offered Voldemort, of the horrible things that would have befallen Muggleborn wizards and witches, Half-bloods, Purebloods, if even a drop had made it’s way to a Death Eater.

‘I’m glad they didn’t get very far.’ Harry said finally. Noises of the corridor outside filtered into the new melancholy as they both sat unmoving.

‘I shouldn’t let Hugo into that room, really,’ Hermione said absently. ‘That’s where I put it … hid it away in the miscellaneous section.’

Harry thought about the bowels of the records room, of the stacks that moved around more than the Hogwarts staircases. It was labyrinthine when organised alphabetically, never mind a stack of miscellaneous. Hugo would be fine.

‘As much as I hate to use something like that, I think it’s our best shot.’ Harry said finally.

Hermione’s head shot up. ‘Is it really your last option? I’m not sure it’s legal …’

‘Is it expressly _ill_ egal?’

‘Well … I suppose not.’

‘Good enough.’ Harry said gruffly. ‘Do you think you could dig it out again?’

‘Of course,’ Hermione said, looking mildly terrified. ‘But I’ve got my own work Harry, I can’t run off and start a new research project with everything here!’ She gestured wildly to the parchment on every surface.

‘I’ll clear it with Kingsley,’ Harry said dismissively, hating himself a little for using his Chosen One clout.

‘Harry!’ Hermione said reproachfully. Harry left feeling better about the prospect of finding out the truth of who these people were, but infinitely more guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a bad habit, to write exclusively in the early hours, but here I am.
> 
> Finally! Hermione! Finally! Plot progression! It's a little jumpy from last chapter, but I spent ages agonising about how to get from point A (early hours in the office) to point B (Hermione). So I just sort of ... skipped. Sorry.
> 
> Anyway, once tests are done ... we'll be seeing more characters. And Hogwarts.


	5. Hogwarts, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry talks to Kingsley and they both panic slightly. Harry goes to Hogwarts and remembers Slughorn still exists.

After lampooning Hermione’s plans for the day, Harry made his way balefully to Kingsley’s office. He anticipated feeling beholden in the same way as when he and Ron had driven the Ford Anglia to school.

Harry knew it would be worse than occlumency lessons with Snape when he saw the drawn look on Kingsley’s face.

‘I’ve told Miranda to give us a solid half hour,’ Kingsley said, slumping his shoulders a little. Harry felt quite honoured – usually all manner of assistants wandered in and out of the Minister’s meetings.

‘A man was brought into Saint Mungo’s early this morning,’ Kingsley began. Harry didn’t like the new turn of conversation. ‘He’d been attacked by some muggles in central London. Didn’t have his wand. Luckily an old warlock found him on his way to pick up today’s _Prophet_ from the Leaky Cauldron.’

‘Who did he look like?’ Harry asked, foreboding pressing down on his chest. Kingsley stared at him.

‘Scrimgeour.’ Harry swore. ‘Whoever it is, is perfectly fine. He’s being kept asleep by Healers. I’ve got two witches from Magical Law Enforcement outside his room just in case, but I’ve had word from the Healer on the ward that he’s not likely to wake up without their knowhow.’

‘Has whoever brought him there squawked to the _Prophet_ yet?’ Harry asked.

‘No. But that means nothing – he was brought in publicly. Right through the waiting room. Wearing a Minister for Magic’s face.’

Harry found it difficult to imagine a worse turn of luck. Not only was the situation continuing at a rapid pace, but it was now oozing its way into the public sphere. He still struggled with motivations too, at the bizarre lack of action or real violence. Were they dealing with some kind of large-scale offensive? A strange cult of people trying to prove an obscure point to the world at large? It was no longer just a matter for Harry personally, or his department. It would quickly become political, and wizards and witches up and down the country would know about this stunt, whatever it was, and have their eyes focussed steadily on how Harry and Kingsley were dealing with such an obscene thing as pretenders mocking the dead.

‘This shows no sign of slowing. We must get ahead of this and set the tone while we still can.’

‘How very savvy of you, Kingsley,’ Harry replied, smiling, knowing how irritated playing politician made Kingsley – knowing how good he was at it too. Kingsley closed his eyes and shook his head.

‘I’ll need you on board, of course.’

_Ah – revenge._

‘The wireless and the papers are scheduled for this afternoon already.’ He continued. ‘My – address, speech, whatever they’ll call it – is being drafted now.’

‘Percy?’ Harry asked in surprise. Kingsley shook his head again.

‘Unsurprisingly, he has called in sick today. I could have done with his help, really … but we can’t blame him. Given the circumstances.’

Harry felt a curl of mild annoyance at Percy’s absence, given that he had been presented with his dead Godfather last night. But Harry was tired and angry at the pretenders and, if truthful, agreed with what Kingsley had said last night: he _was_ rather accustomed to the weird and wonderful after so many years being surrounded by such events.

‘You’re to go to Hogwarts,’ Kingsley said after a solemn pause. Harry looked up in interest. ‘These people, whoever they are, are clever,’ he continued, ‘the Sirius lookalike knew intimate details you thought were private. The Scrimgeour man was right where the Death Eaters left the actual body. It would be naïve of us to leave the school untouched when so much death occurred there.’

Harry felt stupid. It was _he_ that was supposed to think of all angles and prepare endless contingencies. Two of the Aurors under him were qualified before he even knew he was a wizard. He had gone to Hermione for help already. He had to have this fact, so blindingly obvious, spelt out to him by the Minister for Magic, who had a plate so full it was a banquet.

Kingsley seemed to sense Harry’s thoughts, for he tilted his head and told him he understood, because of the fake Sirius.

Harry didn’t like to blame his incompetence on things other than himself; it made him feel pompous. If he did not do better in this matter, better than he had done so far, then it would mean chaos for everyone involved. He was scared, not for the first time, that he was no better than the Ministry he had so reviled in the past … perhaps they too were simply trying their best with the hand they had been dealt.

‘Do you have anything for me to say yet?’ Harry asked around a dry throat. Kingsley drew a sheet of parchment from a pile to his right and pushed it gently across with a forefinger.

* * *

McGonagall knew he was coming, somehow. Maybe it was an owl, maybe it was a floo call. Maybe it was Kingsley letting her know himself. Whatever it was, the headmistress didn’t flinch when Harry careened out of her fireplace and into a small golden stool.

Most portraits were asleep, but those that weren’t watched Harry with great interest and those that had been lurched awake at the clatter he made. Dumbledore’s, of course, remained dozing. Dexter Fortescue clapped in happiness, wide sleeves billowing, when he recognised Harry; he had followed Harry’s career with more interest that _Witch Weekly_ , and exalted every opportunity to chat. (Phineas Nigellus, meanwhile, simply sneered ‘ _You_ ,’ before leaving his frame in time to avoid Fortescue rounding on him in anger.)

A few ticks on the mantlepiece clock went by before Rupert, then Winnie, stepped neatly out of the flames without a speckle of ash on their ruby robes.

‘Potter. I have been informed of the situation.’ McGonagall nodded to Rupert and Winnie who looked a mixture of awed and determined to not be so. She looked at the clock. ‘Fisher, Warren – good morning to you both.’

Winnie, whose juniority was only beaten by Rupert who was a new trainee as of last September, smiled nervously and mumbled something back that contained ‘professor’. Harry, unimaginably relieved he did not have to explain the situation to her, nodded meaningfully to McGonagall, who removed her small glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘Insanity.’ She said firmly.

Phineas Nigellus grizzled in his frame, but Harry paid him no mind as he followed McGonagall down the spiral staircase and into the school at large, his Aurors trailing silently behind.

‘The children are mostly in lessons,’ McGonagall said, striding forwards, ‘it is safe for us to talk, for the moment. Tell me – have you any idea _why_ these people are doing this?’

‘Not at all. It’s only very recent. Last night.’

‘Yes. It must be something quite knotty indeed if the Head Auror is coming to Hogwarts about it.’ At this, she turned and gave Harry a rare small smile. ‘Not that I am disappointed to see you in one piece, Potter. And you, Fisher – I _am_ glad you decided against Healing, it wouldn’t have suited you in the slightest.’

Rupert blinked back owlishly while Winne tried hard not to laugh. ‘Well, my NEWT in Potions wasn’t quite good enough for it, really …’

‘Yes, I seem to recall the Auror Department amending their required brewing standards a few years ago now. Very fortunate for you, Mr Fisher.’

While Rupert nodded blankly, Harry attempted not to meet McGonagall’s eye. At the time he had thought that if he, the Head, wouldn’t have qualified for training, then surely he couldn’t expect others to … Harry avoided thinking about his complete lack of NEWTs because it would skew his tenuous reasoning too much. He had quite enough to be dealing with.

They were coming to third floor now, more central in the castle. A staircase deposited them past the wandering Fat Friar and next to a portrait of a beautiful woman in a headdress who glared at them all.

‘Winnie, you’re going to the Slytherin common room with Slughorn, aren’t you?’ Harry asked desperately, eager to change the conversation. Winnie nodded, brushing her hair back with an air of importance. ‘And Hufflepuff, Rupert?’

They had already spoken at length about this in the office. Harry and Kingsley had eventually decided he was to be accompanied with three Aurors. For protection (Harry bristled), and in different houses to encourage compliance with the students (Harry gleefully offered himself Gryffindor, to see the common room and his children). When rounding up the office like unruly children, Harry found that there was an astonishingly low number of Ravenclaws at the grand count of two. One of them was Jean, who was completing her night shift and looked dead on her feet, and the other was Proudfoot, who simply looked at Harry in anguish when faced with the prospect of teenagers.

And so Harry was covering both towers and three Aurors became two.

‘We are to meet Professor Slughorn directly.’ McGonagall said, ‘he’s waiting in a staff common room just off the Charms corridor.’

If Harry was to hear the puffing pomposity of Slughorn in a thousand years, it would be infinitely too soon. He and Ginny had tried everything possible to avoid his invitations, and decided jointly that the man was only hanging onto the job he had so regretfully taken up again in order to ensnare James, Albus and Lily. ‘The lure of our blood is what he’s been working towards, Harry,’ Ginny had said solemnly. ‘He brewed countless love potions for me to create the perfect little club members.’

Harry’s nieces and nephews bemoaned the Slug Club, and James and Albus had only recently returned from the recent Christmas soirée looking mortified. ‘He made us wear matching dinner jackets,’ James had whispered as Albus shivered beside him. Ron had laughed delightedly – but not as delighted as he had been that Rose was also a guest of honour.

‘My boy!’ his voice echoed around the stone. Harry glared at Rupert and Winnie as they giggled. ‘ _Wonderful_ to see you, absolutely wonderful! How is that dear wife of yours—’

‘Horace!’ McGonagall interrupted. ‘Mr Potter is not here to _dilly-dally_ , he is here on important business for the Ministry.’

Slughorn, rather than drawing back, drew himself higher and fuller, making his stomach roil. ‘Of course,’ he said in a conspiratorial tone, tapping his nose, ‘I sent my students straight to their common rooms after their lesson, even threatened them with a week’s detention just in case the little scallywags decided to go wandering about!’

McGonagall’s nostrils flared. She turned to the three Aurors, half-facing away from Slughorn in an effort to wipe his existence away. ‘Well … Fisher, Madam Rafflesia is waiting by the entryway to the Hufflepuff common room, if you would like to meet her there. And, Ms Warren, if you and Professor Slughorn could make your way down to Slytherin’s, Mr Potter and I shall first meet Professor Flitwick and Professor Jigger outside Ravenclaw house. Please meet us upstairs when you are finished, I expect we shall much take longer than yourselves.’

Quite unsure when he had relinquished his control over the proceedings and not entirely surprised by it either, Harry started back to the staircases with McGonagall. He ignored Slughorn and waved to Rupert and Winnie, tapping his temple in the universal sign of _keep a look out_.

It hadn’t been long, but Harry looked forward to seeing his sons. He hoped McGonagall wouldn’t regale him with their idiotic ventures on his way to see them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I hope this is all right for you all. Any mistakes can be blamed on it being 2.32am. Still, please let me know.
> 
> I had to chop the original draft in half. Hopefully the second bit will be out soon.
> 
> Fun fact: Rafflesia is a flower and it translates to 'corpse flower'.
> 
> Fun fact 2: I really want to get this in somewhere but if I don't - Winnie Warren, my Auror here, is related to Moaning Myrtle (Warren) and she hates it, for obvious reasons. When the found out they nicknamed her Weeping Winnie and she hates that too.


	6. The Marauder's Map

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Map never lies, even when it shows dead people.

The Ravenclaws had been as attentive as Harry could hope for; they listened and accepted and asked the kind of questions that made sense. Professor Jigger was obviously very pleased, even if the man struggled to tear his eyes away from Harry for more than a few seconds. Jigger was something of a cross between Dobby and human in Harry’s eyes; mostly it was because he had protruding eyes that held the gleam of faint, admiring insanity. It was disconcerting, as the man was at least thirty or forty years older than Harry. McGonagall frequently apologised to Harry via the medium of disgruntled glances.

Jigger was not eager to peel himself away from Harry and McGonagall as they walked to Gryffindor tower. He kept asking questions about obscure Defence Against the Dark Arts that Harry hadn’t the slightest clue about and seemed to work in hypotheticals the way most academics did. Endless shrugging on Harry’s part did nothing to dissuade him, and he insisted in accompanying them both to Gryffindor because their Head of House, Professor Sinistra, was away caring for her sister with Spattergroit.

Before long, the Fat Lady loomed into view. She was examining a sliver goblet and muttering to herself before noticing them all and straightening up to attention like a soldier.

‘Headmistress! And – my, Mr Potter! Why, I allowed your boy in not thirty minutes ago! With his horrible little blonde cousin—’

‘Ah, Louis,’ Harry said, ‘you’re still not over the Walking Whiz-bangs, then?’

‘I should hope not!’ McGonagall cut in sharply, glaring at Harry’s smirk. ‘Mr Weasley could have seriously damaged and ancient piece of school property!’

Feeling chastened, Harry turned away and looked aimlessly at the surrounding portraits while McGonagall assuaged the portrait who was hissing ‘ _Property?!_ ’

‘Mr Potter – if you could – what is your opinion on the use of non-offensive spells in duelling scenarios? Do you incorporate it into the Auror programme at all? I have been advising my NEWT level students that—’

‘If I may answer your question on Mr Potter’s behalf, Professor, he does indeed have experience on that front.’ McGonagall said stiffly. Both she and Harry were thinking about the troll. ‘Now. Please, Theseus, I must ask that you save your questions for later on – perhaps a letter?’

Harry glanced between them both, one with eager eyes and one with a smirk. ‘That would be fine, yeah,’ he said weakly. Jigger almost vibrated with happiness.

McGonagall turned and gave the password – _Pygmalion_ – to the Fat Lady, who was grumpily organising the trellis that projected over her head. All three murmured awkward _thank you_ ’s as one by one they clambered through the portrait hole.

If Harry had entered the common room as it usually was, he might have paused and allowed the memories to wash over him. He might have drowned in them; Ron and Hermione, the twins, late night conversations with Ginny by the fire and even the heaviness of after the Battle where it was the only place that felt safe. But he did not enter it at it’s usual. Every Gryffindor was crammed into the space to form a jostling mass, as if they had just won the Quidditch Cup. The noise of too many teenagers easily reached a crescendo and stayed there, being maintained by shouting, laughing, screaming and intermittent bangs. Harry felt completely, entirely at home.

‘Dad!’ Came a small voice from his left. It was Albus. He looked like he wanted to lunge at Harry, but clearly thought better of it by the way he glanced over his shoulder and saw a few of his friends staring. They were so focused on Harry’s forehead he doubted they would notice Al hugging his own father, but Harry restrained himself too and allowed his son to keep whatever odd sense of propriety he held.

‘How are you?’ Harry asked warmly, resting his hand on Al’s shoulder. Al grinned and glanced back at his friends again.

‘Simon’s bought this amazing Muggle trick from home, and he said he’d trade with me for a couple of fake wands—’

‘Uncle Harry!’ This was Rose. She had no qualms about bundling into Harry’s middle, though Harry found it a little hard to breathe and decided she was spending too much time with her Grandmother. Far over her head were more of her cousins smiling easily, Fred and Molly, two of the most laid back people Harry had ever met which he thought was a particularly fortunate trait in both of them. It helped them become their own people, for one, and meant they didn’t mind whether people occasionally got a little misty-eyed around them either.

Casting his eyes around, Harry spotted more Weasleys; there was Victoire, lounging by the fire with some girls, trying to look cooler by pretending to ignore him; Dominique with her, giving Harry a little wave; Roxanne wrestling with a chocolate frog in the corner; Lucy giggling with two boys and a girl over a magazine they had spread between them; Louis getting very close with a girl with long, sleek black hair by the record player. James, however, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Rose, Al – where’s James? Have you seen him?’ They both looked confused.

‘I just saw him come down from the dormitories as you came in,’ said Molly as she shrugged. ‘He’s in here somewhere.’

‘Right,’ Harry said, feeling on edge. He kept looking in and amongst the crowd, trying to find a head of black hair. He thought he saw a flash of it, but then a Fanged Frisbee whistled past the spot it had been in, and it vanished.

McGonagall, who had been giving a young girl a severe telling-off about the state of her school-tie, straightened up with an angry glint in her eye and pressed her wand to her throat.

‘THIS IS HOW YOU WOULD REPRESENT YOUR HOUSE?’ Came the bellow; silence seeming to press louder than even her shout after it. McGonagall let her wand arm drop as she surveyed the children coolly. Even Louis was staring at her in shock, the girl next to him turning dark red.

‘I was not aware how difficult you would find it, to be locked in your own common room together for less than an hour,’ she carried on at normal volume, ‘but if you continue representing this school as such I _will_ ensure no Gryffindors are allowed out of the Tower until _I see fit_.’

‘You can’t – but – what about lessons?’ Said a brave boy with sandy hair. By the look on his face he immediately regretted it.

‘Let us not think of what will surely _not happen_ , Mr Finch-Fletchley.’ McGonagall said sternly. The boy took an involuntary step backwards, and was patted comfortingly on the back by his mortified looking friend.

Withering and abashed, the children’s eyes flickered back and forth between their headmistress and Harry. He could see some of them surreptitiously nudging friends and gesturing with their eyes and nodding their to him. Further still, some looked between Harry and Albus with realisation creeping across their faces.

‘We have an Auror here, Mr Potter, to inform you of the safety precautions you will all have to adhere to for the time being. I trust you will listen to him _very_ carefully, and do everything he asks of you.’ It sounded more like a warning than McGonagall putting actual faith in the students before her, though Harry doubted they needed any warning at all with her as headmistress.

McGonagall looked at Harry and stepped backwards when he stepped forwards, away from Albus and his small collection of cousins.

‘Thank you for gathering here on such short notice,’ Harry began, looking for James still as he repeated what he’d said to the Ravenclaws. ‘The Department have had a series of small incidents recently relating to the war. I’m sure I don’t need to go into how that involves the castle for you all.

‘I am here today to make sure every one of you is vigilant when you go to and from your lessons. You must stay in groups of three or more at all times, and if you see any person who is not in uniform that you don’t know, you and your friends must find a teacher and let them know immediately. Even if you’re not certain, and they seem nice-looking enough, tell the nearest professor straight away. It’s far better to be safe than sorry.’

He felt responsible, and guilty, for their scared faces. Not one of them had known anything like war, and to them it might just as well have been a ghost story like the _Tale of the Three Brothers._ He hated to bring the war into their lives when they were so young: Victoire and the seventh years, the same age as he had been when walking to his death. Molly, Fred – his age when Lord Voldemort had returned to flesh. But, Harry carried on anyway, as all adults must.

‘Even worse than someone you don’t know, you might think you recognise them. They might look like someone you knew, or your parents knew. I will make it very clear, now, that they are not who you think they are.

‘Most important of all, don’t point your wand at them. They’ll only think you’re trying to duel. Keep ready in case you have to defend yourself, but your first option is _always_ to get away as fast as you can. They might try to talk to you, and they might seem normal and a little confused. Ignore them. Run, and find a teacher.’

Harry felt the pressing eyes from all angles, and felt exhausted by it in a way he so rarely did anymore.

‘Hogwarts has remained a fortress for many years, and will continue to be so long after we are all gone,’ McGonagall said slowly, ‘but your safety is the school’s priority, and as such, we must keep you, as they say, _in the know_. Now. Questions?’

Nothing, and then – ‘When do we have to be back here in evenings, please, Professor?’

McGonagall smiled at the girl. ‘Six o’clock every evening, Miss Cattermole – weekends included.’

The magic of silence was broken before she had even finished speaking. Loud groans filled the room, and angry complaints to classmates began to swell to a frenzy. Jigger, Harry saw, shook his head good-naturedly while McGonagall rolled her eyes. Albus ignored his father in favour of turning to shout about Quidditch to Rose and his friends. Louis stood abruptly, abandoning the put-out girl behind him, and was making his way towards Harry to take it up with him personally; he remembered that Louis was a Chaser on the team and James had gushed in his recent letter about an upcoming match against Slytherin.

Speaking of … as McGonagall fielded more questions from unhappy students, and Jigger shrugged at more of them directed at him, Harry looked more closely for James, hoping to spot him in the fray. The children became more and more rowdy, the party atmosphere returning somewhat as some of the braver upper years edged their way towards Harry to ask some questions, or perhaps ask him for an autograph …

There, above Victorie’s head, was a disembodied hand thrown into relief by the fire behind it. Harry immediately knew where James had been – right in the same room the entire time.

‘JAMES!’ He shouted, with no luck – the powder he had been pinching between his thumb and forefinger fell directly onto Victoire’s scalp, and the second later she jumped up, screaming – her hair was a bright canary yellow she was ripping endless feathers out of her hair.

James looked incredibly proud of himself as the Cloak pooled to the floor around him. He grinned from ear to ear, shouting over Victoire’s shrieks – ‘ _Now_ whose hair looks like a bird’s nest!’

Albus looked horrified next to Harry, him too shouting over the noise: ‘I didn’t give it to him dad, the Cloak – I didn’t, it was under my bed!’ while Roxanne marched over to James and grabbed the packet the powder had been in.

Mortified, Harry could barely look at McGonagall. He began clambering over outstretched legs and armchairs to get to James, making sure he scowled appropriately when his son saw him coming. Harry felt very satisfied indeed when the smile slid from James’ face.

‘Of all the times—’ Harry hissed, snatching the Cloak from the floor and shoving it backwards where Al had trotted over to see the universal entertainment of a sibling get told off in front of a room of peers.

‘She wouldn’t stop going on about my hair!’ James protested, pointing to his cousin. One of her friends was trying to help remove the feathers coming out of her ears, but it only seemed to encourage the enchantment further.

‘ _Finite_ ,’ Harry tapped his wand atop Victoire’s head – this made the feathers flash different colours of the rainbow, and double in size. ‘Does it hurt?’ He asked her quickly. She shook her head and then tried to lunge at and hit James through teary eyes, missing when he dodged artfully away.

‘Right, okay, Roxanne, find the antidote – James, Merlin, I can’t believe you—’ Harry had grabbed his upper arm and was beginning to cart him over to Professor McGonagall and Professor Jigger. He became distracted, however, when a crumpled piece of old parchment fell between them; James had clearly stashed it hurriedly under his cloak by his armpit.

Harry reached down and picked up the Marauder’s Map. It was still activated. He saw the cluster of dots in the Gryffindor common room that James must have been using to navigate and found himself there, too.

A sudden, paralysing thought rushed through him. _The Map never lies_. Remus Lupin’s voice echoed through his head even though Harry wasn’t quite sure he remembered what the man sounded like. Even in rat form, Pettigrew had been there. It had shown Sirius as Padfoot, and it had shown through Polyjuice Potion before. Harry couldn’t recall a time the Map had been wrong. He was appalled he had forgotten all about it. He wished for a Map of the Ministry then, wished he had bothered to ask Sirius or Remus just how they had created it. He would have no need for investigation if he had a Map like this of Britain, surely …

And then he thought of why he was in Hogwarts, and what he was warning the students about. He remembered at least he had this, and it was more than he could ask for really, more than he had thought of so far – there was no room on any of the tables within Harry’s eyeline, barely any legroom either. So, he got James to turn around and rested the Map on his back, ignoring his complaints, and began unfolding it and scouring it.

Rosier, Rookwood, Lestrange, Carrow, Dolohov … Harry’s head was full of any Death Eater name he could think of, mixed in with the names of people he might have wronged in the last decade, which was more than a few. He saw Winnie and Rupert making their way to the Tower first, then he looked in the forgotten halls, up by Trelawney, down by the Potions rooms, where Sir Cadogan’s portrait was … the greenhouses were empty, and he could see Madam Rafflesia making her way towards them, taking a small footpath Harry had never used himself that overlooked the Black Lake …

And there, nestled comfortably against the Lake’s border, was a small pinprick of writing that ignored the importance of what it spelt. It was a tiny _Albus Dumbledore_.

Harry looked up immediately, finding the eyes of McGonagall. She knew what the Map was, by now, but had never seen it. Harry knew she was aware one of his sons had it even if he nor Ginny had expressly said, but also knew she would never take it away from them unless they were stupid enough to get caught red-handed.

Harry stumbled back over to her and shoved the Map into her hands. She looked down, and gasped, ‘Potter – surely not,’ without a hint of conviction. There was a strained pause.

‘Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr Potter. And, Theseus,’ she said absently, ‘please stay and answer any questions the students might have.’

Jigger looked horrified. ‘But – I don’t—’

‘My Aurors will be here to help soon, just let them in,’ Harry said hurriedly, following McGonagall out of the portrait hole.

‘You can’t think – Dumbledore—’ she gasped as they took a steep passage behind a tapestry to avoid the delay of explaining to Winnie and Rupert who were rounding a corner nearby.

‘Professor!’ Harry exclaimed, forgetting he was in his thirties, ‘The Map never lies!’

‘But _Albus Dumbledore_ —’ she repeated, and kept doing so in varying levels of disbelief until they reached the shores of the Black Lake.

Harry was vaguely aware of McGonagall standing behind him, panting like he was, but as he stared at the marble tomb his mind cleared and he thought of nothing else. The rock glowed bright as it always did from afar, and it was no less blinding up close.

Unsure how to open it, Harry thought back to the table it had once been at the funeral so many years before. He thought of the glowing light that encased Dumbledore’s corpse, and as he did, saw a line that looked like an ordinary vein in the marble draw its way vertically so that it split the tomb in half. It was barely noticeable amongst its brothers and sisters, but Harry knew better. He wondered if any amount of spell-work would open the tomb after it had been so desecrated by Lord Voldemort years before.

As if to answer, McGonagall patted Harry on the shoulder as she moved past him, staring at the tomb with glassy eyes.

‘I laid these protections myself,’ she said quietly, ‘I will remove them.’

Harry remained as she moved further forward, robes rustling in the wind from the lake and toes planting against the base of the grave where it met the grass. There was reverence in the silence as those gathered strained to hear the muttered incantations. McGonagall’s wand-tip was feather-light where it touched the cold stone.

Slowly, a blue mist rose from the grave and drifted into the air as if caught in an upward draught. It was the reverse of what had occurred at the funeral; the marble seemed to disintegrate before Harry’s eyes with soft grace.

Before long, the silhouette of a body could be seen – feet, nose, clasped hands. Harry’s body stiffened and he tried to prepare himself for what he would see. He was sure, to an extent, that they would not be faced with bones and rot, but a small part of him did not trust wizarding logic to remember this detail. Still, even a sleeping Dumbledore was more than he had seen of the man in years, and it would be abstract to have his vague memories made solid.

The colour of the robes came next, purple and starred to match the shroud Hagrid had carried him to this place in. Harry could barely stand to look, and yet could hardly glance away. The Map dropped uselessly to the floor next to him. McGonagall sniffed as she finished chanting, and then stepped back to stand at Harry’s left. Her hand clasped his elbow tightly as the body of Albus Dumbledore was finally displayed.

Stillness settled and breath was caught in Harry’s throat as he was suspended, helplessly, to watch from somewhere outside himself. His throat closed up all at once, and the silhouette, which had looked as immovable as the marble it lay on, was interrupted. The crooked nose turned away from profile, and the blue eyes looked over half-moon spectacles at Harry’s.

‘Excellent,’ Dumbledore said, arms moving to his side. ‘Truly excellent, my boy. You have outdone yourself.’

Dumbledore rose to a seated position and turned to face the eyes that stared at him. ‘Minerva,’ he said softly, a smile playing about his mouth. ‘It is good to see you looking so well.’

McGonagall’s breaths were heavy and short, her grip on Harry’s elbow fierce but twitching. Harry stared at Dumbledore too, dumbfounded that reality seemed to be warping itself to fit his deepest desires.

A cry of song carried on the wind that Harry had not heard for nearly three decades. Tears welled in Dumbledore’s eyes as he looked up to the heavens beyond Harry and McGonagall’s heads.

‘Fawkes,’ he whispered, ‘such a clever, dear bird. How fitting.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt bad for leaving you in the lurch yesterday. I hope you like this one - I'm nervous!
> 
> A note on all the Gryffindor Weasleys: I know, really, they wouldn't all be in the same house. The chances are too slim for that. But I also have hilarious visions of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team being made up entirely of Weasleys, and of things in a similar vein, so I went with my heart. (Not that the team is made up of only Weasleys here. But, you get my point.)
> 
> I also choose to ignore Cursed Child with every fibre of my being, so there's that, too. Nothing at all against Slytherins, though.


	7. Hallows, Not Horcruxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The arrest of Albus Dumbledore.

_‘You are the worthy possessor of the Hallows … I wanted you to possess them safely. You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He_ _accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.’_ – Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows, p. 577.

* * *

It seemed Harry’s brain had fogged up. He stared at Dumbledore with Fawkes on his shoulder. In his memory, he had become more entity, presence, than a man. Yet here Harry was, facing the truth in all of its obscenity; that Dumbledore was ultimately a very old wizard who wasn’t even taller than him.

Harry desperately tried to think of something to ask, something to confirm what he was seeing. He half hoped McGonagall would say something, but didn’t need to look at her to see she was thunderstruck too.

He thought back to something only they would know, that nobody else would, but so much of the war was public now. It was strange to think of the time when Voldemort was barely returned, and they were still continuing the charade of their lives in school or work, as if they weren’t just giving him time to organise a coup. In that moment he realised how far he had come from the skinny seventeen year old, how much he had allowed the tangle of it all – the deaths and the near-deaths and the wishing for deaths – to unravel into common knowledge.

The last time Harry had heard Dumbledore’s voice was when they were both without pulse, and he was unsure if this Dumbledore had anything to do with that of the train station. And the time before that, the man was still dead, living on only in Severus Snape’s dying memories …

At once, Harry thought of the memory he’d trespassed on, of Snape confessing his life-long devotion; his obsession with Harry’s mother and the way he had proven it to Dumbledore. The Deluminator given to Ron, and how it had led to Ron’s return – and how he had stumbled through the forest, led by the silver light of a doe Patronus.

‘What was Severus Snape’s Patronus? What form did it take?’

McGonagall turned to stare at Harry. Dumbledore, too, looked up from stroking Fawkes’ breast with a single finger – Harry saw his hand was no longer shrivelled and black. The long forefinger paused and attention was switched to staring at him impenetrably.

‘A doe,’ Dumbledore said simply. Harry felt McGonagall’s eyes keenly, now burrowing into the side of his skull. He had half expected a preamble, something less abrupt – he certainly had not come to expect brevity with the old Headmaster. But perhaps he was simply angry at the world at large, and maybe his thoughts were clouded by the anger and emotional growing pains of his childhood.

Harry turned and nodded at the headmistress. She stared inscrutably back at him. The air began moving around them again as it breathed a sigh of – something.

‘Is it – I – Dumbledore? Sir?’ Breathless, Harry was unsure what he was asking. He had no questions, and somehow all of the questions too. Articulation was impossible.

‘I gather it has been a fair few years.’ Dumbledore sighed by way of answer and stared wistfully about himself. ‘Yet – I feel as though I passed along this shore merely yesterday afternoon. You have grown wonderfully, Harry. I cannot tell you how felicitous I am.’

‘You’re surprised?’ Harry asked, a curl of stubbornness and perhaps even anger whirling it’s way around his gut.

Dumbledore’s brown creased, and he was suddenly intense. ‘Absolutely not. I have always had the utmost faith in you and your abilities.’

‘You were dead,’ Harry said bluntly. ‘How could you have any idea of what happened after that?’

‘I was dead. And guessed at this, of course. But my guesses have, usually, been good.’

‘How can you have _guessed_?’ McGonagall asked harshly as if it were a dirty word. She had regained some of herself. Dumbledore’s eyes flickered between them both as he spoke.

‘Because I did not need to guess at Lord Voldemort’s desire for immortality. It is the most dependable thing of all. I knew he would take your blood, Harry, to strengthen himself. I was certain it would tether you together until you were able to realise what needed to be done to be free from the piece of him that lived inside you for so long.’

‘To get him to kill me, you mean.’ Harry said, without sharpness. He was tired and felt McGonagall’s eyes switch to him again as he remembered his death was known to only very few. ‘You’ve explained this to me before,’ Harry went on, ‘in King’s Cross.’

‘Have I?’ Dumbledore asked, smile breaking the solid lines of his face. ‘I don’t recall.’

Harry thought about the tears and the story of Gellert Grindelwald. He thought about how Dumbledore seemed to be waiting there for him, for all that time, to relieve himself finally and fully of all secrecy and guilt. Harry doubted the man was lying, yet he certainly doubted the man could forget their conversation either.

‘We talked about the Hallows, too,’ Harry said quietly, following a half-formed hunch and watching Dumbledore closely. There was a stiffness developing in his smile, and an alteration in his eyes that was impossible to trace.

‘I must confess… I do not believe this will be the final mention of the Hallows between us, Harry.’

None of them knew what to say. Dumbledore looked, above all, tired, and Harry felt suddenly guilty for pushing him. It was like in King’s Cross all those years ago – any bitterness or resentment melted away as soon as Harry remembered Dumbledore was just a man, like the rest of them, who was flawed and had spent his entire life repaying the world for his arrogant youth.

Harry did not want to continue in this vein. It was a quick realisation; that for the time being it did not really _matter_ how Dumbledore was here. Really, when you moved past theories and the disbelief, that was all that counted. Everything in their lives had led them to this moment, and there was no rewinding the past. Magical theory could wait … mastering death could wait. For now, Harry wanted to accept the Map’s truth, and wanted to allow himself to feel happiness that Dumbledore was back.

It struck Harry, too, that before him was one of the only men who could understand the strange position he was in. Both had lived through early grief, horribly publicised, and both had fought a duel that they alone could win. They were both public property from that point onwards, and had watched the dream of a subdued existence slip between their fingers even if it had vanished long before that fight.

Harry couldn’t imagine the pain of having to duel Ron, or perhaps more aptly, Ginny, to then be celebrated for it. He thought about becoming friends with one of them from the depths of loneliness from the Dursley’s, of realising one day the evil intent hidden behind their easy smiles, and how he had been swept along with it all. The terror he would feel, seeing the lengths it had grown to. Harry thought of having to hide that shame from the world, repenting every day by living out what was the worst fear of his youth: hiding away.

In maturity, Harry understood Dumbledore’s deep fear of himself even though he had never experienced it. And that was why Harry forgave him, and honoured him through his son. He hoped that Al, James, Lily, his godchildren, nieces and nephews – all the students in the castle above them, would have the strength and bravery to stand up to their own worse impulses or closest friends. Dumbledore’s words from so many years ago trickled into Harry’s thoughts; of the true bravery, in standing up to your friends. And then bizarrely, Sirius’, flitting through after – that light and dark lived within them all, but it was which you chose to live by that truly made the difference.

‘Sirius,’ he had said it aloud. Both heads whipped to him. ‘I – he’s at the Ministry. It must be him, really him – now that—’

‘Now that Albus is back,’ McGonagall said faintly. She looked at Harry steadily. ‘You are sure, Potter? That the Map tells the truth?’

‘It showed Peter Pettigrew. Even the Cloak couldn’t trick it.’ Harry couldn’t help it – his eyes flickered over to Dumbledore when he mentioned the Hallow. McGonagall took up the Map and stared at their dots.

‘I will never know,’ she muttered in disbelief.

‘I suppose I am at your mercy,’ Dumbledore said, looking blissfully unconcerned.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ McGonagall snapped. Dumbledore hummed, and patted Fawkes.

‘The Ministry will never take this as evidence,’ Harry said slowly, thinking. ‘Kingsley might … but that’s about it. And I don’t want everyone knowing about it, either.’

‘Wise,’ said Dumbledore.

‘So your boys may continue sneaking down to the kitchens?’ McGonagall asked tartly, raising an eyebrow.

‘Don’t want anyone getting ideas … though a bit for that, I suppose,’ he said sheepishly.

‘Why not have me arrested?’ Dumbledore asked, as if wondering about the weather next weekend. He looked amused; ‘I give you my word I shall go quietly when the Aurors arrive.’

Harry looked at him incredulously. The very idea of someone arresting Albus Dumbledore was insanity. ‘We haven’t got a way to prove who anyone is yet,’ Harry said, half-expecting Dumbledore to have a solution to that too.

‘I assume you are still good friends with Miss Granger? And Mr Weasley?’ Harry nodded. ‘Well, I shouldn’t expect too long a wait. You three have always solved and riddles facing you before. I have utmost faith in you to find the answer to this issue, too.’

They stared at each other for a long few seconds. Harry suspected Professor McGonagall, too, was trying to think of some other miraculous course of action.

‘Well, Mr Potter,’ McGonagall said, clearly coming up short on ideas. She turned to Harry who hadn’t the energy to pull his jaw back together. She looked faint. ‘I suggest you escort your new interviewee up to the castle. I shall mend the tomb.’

‘An Auror!’ Dumbledore exclaimed, clapping his hands together and turning to Harry fully after he waved a disgruntled Fawkes away. ‘Wonderful! I do so enjoy when students achieve their goals.’

* * *

Harry must have said sorry thousands of times between explaining Sirius’ appearance to Dumbledore and the stares of hundreds of children. The eyes didn’t stop on the way through the Ministry, either, and neither did Dumbledore’s quiet reassurances and chatter.

Winnie and Rupert, too, stared at the old Headmaster as if Merlin had come for a visit. In all fairness it may as well have been for them, as they were a generation of small children when the war arrived, and so had never quite managed to attach the name to a living, breathing man. They found it farcical that Dumbledore had ever deigned to eat with the students in the Great Hall at all, barely comprehending the fact he had once been a teacher.

Quite traumatically, Harry had also walked in on a younger Teddy entertaining Albus by walking about in Harry’s dress robes, Dumbledore’s face taken from the Chocolate Frog card that lay at their feet. Tripping up over the white beard which was far longer than he was tall did nothing to help the image, nor did a pre-pubescent boy’s shout of surprise coming out of the face help either.

(It was nothing on the gnarled version of Lord Voldemort Teddy had created from imagination when he was nine, though.)

It seemed almost immoral, to shove Albus Dumbledore into a cell in the Ministry. Proudfoot and the older Aurors shook their heads, disgusted, and even Dawlish scowled at Dumbledore with a venom Harry was unused to seeing _not_ directed at him. He privately thought it was a bit rich, coming from a man who had happily tried to arrest what he knew as the ‘real’ Dumbledore from his own office so many years prior.

His Aurors kept asking questions about Hogwarts and the case, and Harry kept grumpily deflecting them. He sat slumped at his desk in a strange limbo – he brewed what had happened since yesterday evening in his head, and reduced it to mulch. He couldn’t even talk to Kingsley – he was in endless talks with probably important witches and wizards. Roberta, cube closest to his open door, kept looking at him with her single eye.

When it was drawing close to five in the afternoon, she paused on her way out to question a witness to a dud case she’d been putting off for days. She watched him stare at the report he had been half-heartedly working on as he mulled over what on earth he could do with the situation. ‘Why don’t you send out those filing memos?’ She asked, trying to chivvy him into easy, dull work to pass the time before going home.

Harry, who had been slowly preparing to leave, jolted upright. ‘Thank you!’ He shouted brightly, seizing a crumpled old memo with numbers scrawled on the corner. As Roberta backed away looking concerned, Harry nearly broke his quill in his hurry.

_News on what we talked about? Need to talk soon – development. Going home now. Must tell Ginny._

_Harry_

He tapped his wand into the middle, and it began folding itself into a messy shape. He had never mastered the intricacies of keeping the lines neat and crisp like Hermione and Percy. On one of the wings, he wrote Hermione’s name, and on the other _DMLE_. He shoved it into the air, and it whistled off through the cubicles only a little lopsided, clipping the crown of Thomas Cresswell’s head in the process.

Deciding it was now close enough to home time to rush off, Harry followed the purple paper out. He tried hard not to look down the corridor where Sirius was – where he was _mostly_ sure Sirius was – trying to avoid running down it and throwing the door open. He hoped Dumbledore was all right, too, though he had looked reasonably content humming to himself on the wooden bench they’d left him on.

In the Atrium, Harry was drawn into the flow of black cloaks also heading to the fireplaces. He bowed his head to avoid drawing attention to himself – even now, employees occasionally accosted him with gusto – but he was foiled by a little man sprinting around the edge of the Fountain of Magical Brethren with a large camera.

‘Mr Potter!’ He shrieked, making the witch jump next to him as he bellowed inches away from her ear, ‘what do you have to say about the Minister’s interview on the Network—’

‘How did you get in here?’ Harry scowled, shouldering past and staring at the end fireplace in the hope it would jump closer to him by sensing his sheer desperation.

‘Why did you go to Hogwarts? What are they trying to achieve?’

‘If I knew that, it’d be over by now,’ Harry said, nearing the fireplace, ignoring the queue system.

‘How many are you holding so far, Mr Potter—’ Harry shuffled closer, feet away from the low flames, the flash of the camera startling him and leaving marks on the inside of his eyelids, ‘Potter! Potter – who are they? Should we be concerned—’ Harry mumbled an apology when he stepped in front of an old red-faced warlock, but finally stepped into the grate, ‘What if they’re not all like this Potter – what if Death Eaters—’

As the Ministry whirled away from him, Harry’s stomach jolted. It wasn’t the Floo. Many Death Eaters died during the war, the battle … just because their names weren’t carved into stone in the Ministry didn’t mean it didn’t happen. And many people who sympathised with them had died, too, even if they weren’t valued as a member of Voldemort’s closest few …

Harry fell out of his own fireplace, too distracted to land properly. He sat up, groaning, hating the way his body was beginning to betray him.

‘Well,’ Ginny said patronisingly from the doorway, staring at him on the floor. ‘ _That’s_ what it was. Dead people.’

‘It’s not – why do you think it’s dead people?’

Ginny looked at him pitifully. ‘Honestly, Harry. I can read between the lines.’ She turned back into the kitchen. Harry stared at her retreating back. Clearly, Kingsley hadn’t been as subtle as he’d planned.

As he pulled himself upright (with annoying difficulty), Harry brushed his trouser legs and shouted through to her. ‘I don’t know what Kingsley said! I was at—’

‘Hogwarts, I know! He mentioned you!’ She shouted back. Harry walked through and saw her clasping an empty mug. Next to her sat Teddy, hair pink, and across was Ron with a scowl on his face.

‘Dead people?’ Ron asked, looking disgruntled. Teddy shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable with the potential for conflict lying in the air. ‘You tell us about all the boring robberies, but you don’t tell us about dead people walking around?’

‘They’re not—’ Harry began telling them that they weren’t actually dead people, that they were some group trying to make an obscure point, but – they _were_ dead people. He looked at Ron and suddenly saw traces of Fred … looked at Teddy, wide-eyed, so much more dreadful, and saw Remus Lupin’s eyes.

Harry’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Hermione, true to her word, hadn’t mentioned anything to even Ron. But it wasn’t as if she had had the time yet. That morning was years away. He struggled to think of a worse time and place to talk about this to Teddy.

He sat heavily down on the bench, reaching for the teapot in the middle. It was empty. His hand brushed over letters from Mrs Weasley and Bill and Fleur – he saw more pieces of parchment under them, too.

‘Who do they look like?’ Teddy asked, downcast. He didn’t seem to really want the answer. Ginny and Ron’s eyes fell on him immediately, and Harry dully remembered Teddy was meant to be off with friends in Ireland. He must have come back because of the radio, must have realised too, and Ginny and Ron had been here talking it through with him.

‘Marlene McKinnon … Fabian Prewett … Sirius.’ Ron swore loudly. Harry, exhausted, ignored Ginny’s rising voice and Teddy’s eyes. He reached into his cloak and threw the blank Marauder’s Map down onto the table.

Ginny did not notice. She had stood, and was boiling the kettle. Teddy stared at the parchment without realising what it was, whereas Ron’s eyes turned round.

‘Why’ve you got that?’ He asked slowly, reaching for it. He didn’t bother to activate it, but seemed to use it as a prop to think as he turned it slowly back and forth in his hands.

‘Snatched it off James,’ Harry said, willing Ron to come to come to the logical answer he was trying to show so that Harry could, selfishly, avoid the mess of having to explain aloud with Teddy sitting and watching.

Ron was deliberating quietly. Harry thought he would have to push him along, and so tapped the table near him. Ron looked up, and Harry tilted his head towards Teddy in the universal parental method of explaining that _I’m not saying it all in front of the kid_ without any words at all. He couldn’t bear to send Teddy out of the room; didn’t want to treat him like a child in the way he had so hated when he was younger. But he needed someone else to know – someone else to help him.

‘Pettigrew,’ Harry said beseechingly, eyes flickering downwards to the Map. Teddy perked up in vague recognition but looked puzzled, and Ron looked back and forth comically between Harry and the Map in his hands. Ginny turned abruptly to look at the table.

‘What do you …’ Ron turned his hands about for a moment. The radio crackled in the background. ‘Dead people …’ He said again. As it always was with Ron, his face froze in shock as he realised all at once. He spun to look at Harry fully. ‘No,’ he breathed; Harry nodded and closed his eyes.

Ron swore again and threw the Map back down on the table as if it was responsible for the truth. ‘Who…?’ Ron asked, and Harry said Albus Dumbledore’s name again, lowly, reflecting somewhere in the back of his mind that he had said that name more in the past hours than in the past years.

‘Dumbledore and Sirius …’ Ron said in disbelief leaning back in his chair heavily. ‘What a … this is … I can’t believe …’

Teddy’s hair was turning darker and darker. ‘Is that the Map?’ He asked eventually. He looked at Harry again with Remus Lupin’s eyes, and Harry could only nod with a lump in his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would rather not dwell on the quality of this chapter - I hope the next will be better. I do not like my characterisation much at all here, nor the way I went about things. But I also completed it, eventually, and am at a loss for alternatives, so my only wish is that you like the chapter enough to continue.
> 
> Slightly deflated, slightly pleased it's moving steadily on.
> 
> Please let me know your hopes for who is next and how! Thank you so much for reading - it means the world.


	8. Cell Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The adults talk, and Harry visits Sirius.

There was a loud crash; Ginny had dropped the teapot into the bottom of the sink. She was the only one that didn’t seem to notice; she stared over her shoulder at Ron, eyes whizzing between him and Harry.

‘Ted,’ she said lightly, ‘please help Lily de-gnome the garden.’

Teddy frowned. Harry knew it wasn’t because he was work-shy, but rather because he, too, could feel the atmosphere drop several degrees. ‘Um … it’s quite late? And Lily was moaning about how she had to do it last week …’

‘I think they’ve made a burrow. Behind the shed.’ Ginny didn’t glance at him and instead stared at Ron who was fidgeting by squeezing a corner of the Map neurotically.

Teddy looked around the room at the adults, who were, all staring either at each other or him. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll—uh—find her then?’

‘She’s by the trees,’ Ron said unnecessarily as Teddy walked slowly out of the room towards the kitchen door. Ginny sent Ron a sharp look which was not lost on Teddy; he looked at Harry for answers and it took most of Harry’s energy to smile back. It felt tight and wafer-thin.

All three of them watched Teddy’s progress to the bottom of the garden. Then Ginny turned, blocking half of the dusky window-light.

‘Sirius? Dumbledore?’

‘The Map!’ Exploded Ron. ‘The Map showed Dumbledore—didn’t it! Harry?’ He nodded.

‘You’re basing this off the Map? A—what—fifty-odd year old teenagers’ map?’ Ginny asked archly, ‘thank Merlin I got Teddy to leave, _imagine_ if he heard where you’re going with this!’

Ron mumbled something about how he hadn’t thought she could hear their earlier conversation, much less pick up on the subtext. She snapped back at him waspishly: ‘Don’t be an idiot, Ron, you’re as subtle as a House-elf.’

‘Ginny,’ Harry said lowly, ‘I spoke to Dumbledore.’

‘You spoke to Dumbledore.’

‘With McGonagall.’

‘McGonagall?’

‘Are you just going to repeat everything?’ Ron asked, bruised. Ginny rolled her eyes and sat back down. Harry continued.

‘The Map’s never lied before, Ginny. And he told me Snape’s Patronus.’

Both brother and sister turned to stare at him with identical expressions of shock. Harry thought a shadow briefly passed over Ron’s face.

‘Blimey,’ Ron breathed. ‘It’s real … you don’t think—’

Harry knew exactly what Ron was thinking, about Teddy’s parents and Fred and all the rest.

‘Ron,’ Ginny cut him off. ‘Just don’t.’

Harry looked at her properly. She was far away, eyes looking into the middle distance of the kitchen table.

‘Where’s Hermione?’ Ron asked suddenly, looking about him as if his wife was about to emerge from under the sink or climb out from a cupboard.

‘She’s looking into a way to know for sure,’ Harry said, and Ron looked aghast.

‘She knows!’

‘I only told her this morning—’

‘Does Hugo know?’

‘No Ron, Harry did not tell his ten year old nephew about Albus Dumbledore coming back from the dead.’ Ginny snapped. ‘Do you always have to be this thick?’

‘Lay off it Ginny, I—’

The only person Ron bickered with more than Hermione was Ginny. They knew exactly which way to annoy the other best, and typically enjoyed nothing more than proving they were better at something than the other. Harry supposed it was something to do with being the babies of the family. He had been trying hard to stop Lily continuing the tradition by assaulting James and Al whenever they irritated her, mostly because she would likely knock them unconscious before they knew what was happening. Whenever he saw Ginny reading the paper and ignoring them as they swatted at each other, she simply explained that he didn’t understand siblings, and they simply had to get it out of their systems.

‘What if Voldemort comes back?’ Harry said suddenly. In unison they looked out of the window to check Teddy and Lily weren’t within earshot.

Ron looked the most uneasy. ‘I don’t think he could … I don’t think he’s human enough. _Was_ human enough.’

‘But he did it once,’ Harry said, feeling desperation pool within him.

‘Harry,’ Ginny said, reaching for his hand gently. ‘That’s because he latched onto you. Besides, you got rid of—all of _them_.’

‘What if there was more?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Ron said firmly. ‘If Dumbledore said that was all of them, then that was all of them. And your scar hasn’t hurt in years.’

Harry thought about meeting with Dumbledore earlier on, about the serenity around him. His confidence in his guessing. He thought, for once, that the worst-case scenario might be impossible.

‘Still.’ Harry said, clawing at everything that could go wrong, trying to ignore how tired he was, ‘there’s the Death Eaters.’

Ron and Ginny exchanged a look. ‘If you’re talking about the likes of the Carrows, I reckon if anybody could handle them it’s the Head Auror.’ Ginny said. ‘They’re nothing without Voldemort, Harry. _And_ they were around when we were kids and barely affected us at all, when everyone thought he was dead then.’

‘I don’t think they’ll come back,’ Ron said. ‘That lot are a bunch of pillocks, they’d never manage it. They’d get lost on the way.’

They all laughed and Ron grinned, satisfied. Harry rubbed the hand Ginny had been holding through his hair – he felt his wedding ring, cool against his scar.

‘Before they come back,’ Ginny said, gesturing to the door, ‘Do you think there might be others?’

The mood dropped into solemnity. ‘Well, at the rate they’re coming …’ Ron said ominously.

‘We have to prove they’re real,’ Harry said. ‘No point talking about them like they’re … _them_ , if everyone will think we’ve gone mad if we try to tell them.’

They all paused. ‘Hermione best hurry up, don’t like the idea of Goyle senior up and strutting about.’ He shrugged and shook his head. Ginny looked over at him in disbelief, as did Harry.

‘Better not let Hermione hear you say that,’ said Harry, looking at Ron in amazement. He turned to Ginny. ‘How many years have they been together? And he still questions silly things like Hermione knowing her way round an archive.’

‘I wonder who you’ll live with after the divorce,’ Ginny said, looking thoughtful. ‘Better food at Hermione’s, but you’d get away with a lot more at his.’

‘I think I’d like to be shipped off to the grandparents’, actually,’ Harry replied idly. Ron scowled.

‘You’re both hilarious, you know that?’ He said. Ginny picked up the tea pot and began the process of refilling it at the sink.

‘Teddy and Lily are coming back now,’ she told them both, looking over the sink into the garden. ‘Good thing, it’s getting quite dark out. Ron—don’t mention a thing.’

‘Why’re you looking at me!’ Ron demanded. ‘Harry’s the one that’s telling everyone about it in the first place!’

‘What’s dad telling everyone?’ Lily asked, stepping through the threshold. She and Teddy had red faces and even redder noses; the wind must have risen in the meantime. Harry saw Teddy’s eyes narrow as he looked between them all.

‘He won’t shut up about his Horntail tattoo,’ said Ron promptly.

‘Staying for dinner, Ted?’ Harry asked as Lily wrinkled her nose in disgust and Teddy shrugged off his jacket in the new heat of the kitchen. Looking contemplative, he folded it slowly and pressed it into the back of a dining chair.

‘Depends on what it is,’ he said solemnly with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Lily was already arguing with her uncle about the existence of her father’s tattoos.

Before Harry could think of any ideas, Ginny cut in. ‘Mum dropped round a pork loin,’

‘I’ll have a bit of that, yeah,’ Teddy said eagerly. Harry grinned, anxieties forgotten as he turned to look at Ron who had gotten up as they were speaking and was looking hungrily at the brown paper bag on the countertop.

‘Wonder when Hermione’ll be home,’ Harry said for the sole purpose of seeing Ron’s face drop as he remembered he couldn’t stay for dinner.

‘When can Hugo come over?’ Lily asked Ron, distracting him. ‘I’ve got to show him my new Chocolate Frog cards.’

‘He’s ill at the moment,’ Ron said. ‘But probably day after next, definitely at your nan’s for Sunday lunch.’

‘Yes, very ill,’ said Harry drily. Ron shot him a look.

‘You have no idea what George pulled today, honestly—’

And they descended into the quiet chaos of family dinner, even if it was without some of the family. Ron absconded into the green flames of the floo before long, and clutched Harry’s arm tight before he left. He was sombre and stared so intensely that Harry had to look away.

‘It’ll be all right mate, really. I’ll clue Hermione in, don’t worry about that. Don’t think about all the bad bits, think about what’s happening _now_ for once. Sirius and Dumbledore!’ He laughed in disbelief. ‘Everything will sort itself out, it always does. Just go and talk to your Godfather. Tell Teddy soon, too, I reckon Sirius will have some good stories about Remus and Tonks. Just enjoy it, you deserve some _good_ weird stuff for once.’

‘Thanks,’ was all Harry could say, choked and thankful, guilty that he had been keeping Sirius to himself when the man was a veritable bank of information for Teddy, too.

Ron patted him on the shoulder, drew him into a one-armed hug, and left. Harry didn’t mention anything to Teddy and instead debated it all with a thoughtful Ginny well into the night.

* * *

Harry woke very early in the morning, on purpose. He wanted a quiet few hours at work before everyone from his department and others came in. Ginny woke with him; she made the tea and toast while Harry completed last night’s washing up with his anxious, restless hands.

The clock ticked into the silence as they both picked at their bread. ‘You’ll let me know how it goes, won’t you?’ Ginny asked, tapping her wedding ring against the porcelain mug. Harry nodded. ‘I wish I could be there.’

‘I know,’ Harry said, ‘I wish you could see them both. All of them. But—’

‘Don’t worry, I know why.’ She sighed and looked down. Her hair was knotted and she had bags under her eyes; Harry knew she was almost as affected as he was. And she couldn’t even do anything in the way he could. He reached out and took her hand.

‘It’ll be all right.’

‘I know,’ she said, smiling. ‘It always is, in the end.’

Harry arrived at the Ministry with little sleep but a fair amount of determination. His wand was still too long and had grown even more, this time—he vowed to ask Dumbledore about it when everything had calmed down a little—and as he stared at his reflection in the polished walls of the lift he steeled himself.

It was Amber Fogs and Roan Williamson on the night shift, just at the tail end of it and looking rather worse for wear. Amber didn’t insist on staying for the remainder for even a moment and looked very relieved—Roan, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the charity.

‘Why are you in so early?’ He asked, though he was gathering his belongings as he spoke. Harry shrugged and tried to look nonchalant, which was hard when he was still half-asleep and also incredibly stressed about most everything. ‘Lots of paperwork for the fakes, you know’ he murmured. They simultaneously glanced at the time, and Harry knew Williamson didn’t buy it for a second.

Nevertheless, he seemed to decide it was not worth the fuss. He had more than three hours knocked off his shift after all, though he did insist Harry call him back in if there was any trouble and not to be ‘so proud you end up handling it yourself and get maimed for life’.

Faced with the small corridor that led off, one by one, to the cells that kept their occupants locked up, Harry panicked. Instead of going into Sirius’, his feet took him to Dumbledore’s with barely a second thought.

Somehow, the old man was wide awake and happily writing on a piece of parchment. He glanced up immediately when Harry entered, and seemed quite overjoyed.

‘Harry! Lovely.’ The parchment was full of runes, cluttered and miniscule but neat, with what looked to Harry like random lines between paragraphs that spiralled around the page.

Conjuring a chair (not even close to the brilliantly comfortable armchairs Dumbledore managed, but merely a small step up from a rather pathetic three-legged stool) Harry sat down opposite him. ‘Everything been all right, Professor? Treating you well?’

‘I have not been your Professor for a number of years, Harry,’ Dumbledore said, amused. ‘But yes, the Aurors have been nothing but courteous. A credit to you, I am sure; I certainly would not expect the same treatment in Alastor’s days here.’

‘He was something of a renegade, wasn’t he?’ Harry grinned back. Dumbledore chuckled and agreed.

‘May I ask what brings you here, Harry?’ He enquired once their smiles died.

‘I—’ Harry’s throat closed up. The old headmaster simply waited carefully, looking generously around the room which would have fooled anyone had the walls not been utterly plain and uninspiring. ‘It’s Sirius … I’ve got to see him. I’m going to see him now.’

‘Ah,’ he nodded. ‘A difficult conversation, for sure.’

‘What could I say to him?’ Harry pleaded, ‘how do I explain something like this to him?’

Dumbledore looked thoughtful. He stroked the end of his beard with soft, rhythmic strokes that were somehow in time with Harry’s heartbeat. ‘Sirius Black is a very intelligent man,’ he began, ‘and he has already seen you as you are now. You might have aged, Harry, but you look remarkably unchanged, too. I have no doubt he recognised you almost immediately. He has had nothing to do but think and dwell for many hours now … I would be surprised if he has not thought of an explanation very close to the truth already. If amongst other theories, of course.’

‘That he died and came back?’ Harry asked sceptically. Dumbledore shook his head.

‘I would hazard he believes he has accidentally travelled through time, or something similar. The Veil of Death is largely unresearched. It seems a valid conclusion to come to. I assume he was found near there?’

‘Percy and Kingsley found him wandering around the Ministry.’ Harry said. ‘So I think so.’

‘On that matter, Harry,’ Dumbledore twirled his thumbs around each other, ‘may I ask who else…?’

‘One of the Prewett brothers, Fabian … Marlene McKinnon, Sirius, Scrimgeour …’

‘Scrimgeour!’ He repeated. ‘I had hoped he would survive. You shall have to _fill me in_ , as they say, on the events after my death. How interesting, that Miss McKinnon and Mr Prewett have also returned …’

‘About that,’ Harry hurried, ‘why? You acted as if you thought this might happen, by your, uh, grave.’

‘I would rather not burden you with this now, before you reunite with Sirius,’ Dumbledore said quietly. Harry felt a surge of annoyance which the other man appeared to sense. ‘I do not think it is anything bad, Harry. Certainly, I doubt very much that even Lord Voldemort will reappear. Let that reassure you. What is happening is new and unprecedented, but I do not think you should fear too much for the present. It is merely a great personal load and perhaps requires a long conversation with time you can little afford at this moment. And I would rather like some more time to organise my thoughts on the matter, I must say.’

‘You said something about the Hallows. About the Master of Death.’

‘Yes.’

‘You think they have something to do with it. And it all has something to do with me.’

‘Yes.’

Frustrated, Harry stood. He bemoaned the vagueness, hated the uncertainty. He felt bitter that it was, again, him. But Sirius was in the next room, who was one of the very few people in his childhood that didn’t care about everything surrounding Harry so much as he cared about _Harry_ himself. And, in his adulthood, after years of living without the shadow of Voldemort and general immortality, Harry was not going to push aside those in his life like Sirius to their complete detriment in order to pursue vague concepts. Harry let the Hallows go—for the moment, while he still could.

‘I’m going to talk to Sirius,’ he told Dumbledore unnecessarily. He nodded.

‘Good luck. Though I doubt you will need it.’

‘Thanks,’ Harry said weakly.

Sirius and Dumbledore shared a cell wall. Harry needed to take only a few steps to be outside the door he wanted. He couldn’t help himself—he stared at it until his eyes started to blur, and then he blinked repeatedly when he saw colours swirling in and out of focus. He shook his head, and raised a trembling hand to the door-handle.

When he entered, Sirius jumped. He had been lounging on the cot in the dim light of the wall-light. Harry was unsure if he had been sleeping, but Sirius was certainly awake now he had walked in. The lights flared when they sensed someone crossing the threshold, and both faces were thrown into sharp relief.

Sirius was pale and tired. His borrowed robes hung off him. Harry was quite shocked at how thin he was … it could not have been from his time in this cell, but from his captivity in Grimmauld Place. Harry had never realised, before. Never noticed.

Too tense to sit and therefore not bothering to conjure another chair like the one he had abandoned in Dumbledore’s cell, Harry leaned against the wall and crossed his arms against his chest for something to do. Sirius eyed him warily, pressing himself into the corner. Harry’s throat closed up.

Neither said a thing for a minute or so. They stared at each other; Harry in disbelief and Sirius inscrutably back.

‘Sirius,’ Harry croaked. His Godfather’s eyes widened. ‘It’s me.’

‘Harry?’ He asked, hands kneading at the mattress he sat on. ‘It can’t be … you’re fifteen. _He’s_ fifteen.’

Sirius looked impossibly lost. Harry had never seen him so uncomposed and it felt too wrong, too unsettling. He wanted arrogance and ease and even that too-familiar bitterness he had let take him over so often before.

‘You died,’ Harry’s eyes stung in the corners and his voice was smaller than it had been in years. ‘You fell through the Veil, and you died.’

‘The Veil …’ Sirius was staring hard at him. Harry looked away. ‘Where did they go? Malfoy and Bellatrix? The rest?’

‘The Prophecy smashed. Voldemort came. Everyone saw.’

‘They know? They believe he’s back? But you’re—is he still—?’ Fear and worry passed over Sirius’ face like a cloud. Harry saw, easily, that he was gripped with the relief of the truth finally being shown together with the fear of the open warfare it entailed.

‘No. He’s gone. Properly, this time.’ More than he cared to admit, Harry struggled with the overwhelmed look of confused jubilation that crossed through Sirius’s eyes. He was somewhat bewildered at the trust Sirius was showing in him.

‘Harry—’ Sirius believed him, must believe him and what he was saying, as he was saying his name too and Harry got the privilege of hearing it spoken from his Godfather for the first time in years and years, ‘—I—I always knew, well done, I can’t tell you—’ he pressed his hands to his face and breathed deeply. Harry watched on.

Sirius spoke through his hands, voice muffled and weak. ‘How long has it been, since … whatever it was happened to me— _died!_ —you look—you’re—'

Harry took a long, deep breath to compose himself. ‘Twenty years,’ his voice was embarrassingly an octave higher, but he couldn’t make himself care.

He looked at Harry in disbelief, hands falling to his sides. ‘Morgana,’ he breathed, ‘you must be my age!’

Harry nodded and they both stared at the other. Two men, of an age, but still somehow only Godfather and teenager when they looked at each other. Against all odds, the ridiculousness of the scene burst through Harry’s thoughts. Startlingly, he grinned, and Sirius smiled weakly in return; Harry’s hands dropped to his sides too.

Sirius shook his head in disbelief, eyes fixed on Harry’s face, a glassiness developing in them that Harry couldn’t look away from. With a jolt he hadn’t been expecting, Sirius laughed, struck by their situation too. It was the bark Harry had not heard for so many years, that he had not heard nearly enough in the holidays he had spent in Grimmauld Place or in the cold Hogsmeade visits to the cave.

‘Sirius,’ he said, but couldn’t say more. He stepped over towards the cot Sirius was still seated on at the same time his Godfather swiftly rose to meet him. They were now, bizarrely, of a similar height as well as age, and when Sirius clasped Harry’s shoulders as he had done so many years before, he no longer needed to hunch his shoulders to be eye-to-eye.

‘You did it,’ Sirius said quietly, ‘everything that happened, and you still did it,’ he raised his eyes to look at the ceiling for a moment. Harry had never stood so still in his life. ‘Harry, I—’ he seemed overcome with some emotion— ‘your dad would— _I_ am—I’m so _proud_.’

Harry felt an involuntary, watery smile rise on his lips. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and instead drew Sirius into a hug. Both heads rested on the others’ shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the reunion lived up to your expectations:)


	9. Meetings at the Ministry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'I don’t want to know why you’re digging up Death Eater blood magic records, and I certainly don’t want to discuss why you’ve lead one of our key welfare legislators away from a very important agreement with the Bulgarian Ministry. But, Harry… can you at least promise me that there’s a point to this? That you’re not following some obscure hunch?’

To continue on with his working day after a moment such as this seemed impossible. He knew he had to do it, but as Harry released Sirius he was glad he had come into the Ministry so very early. It bought him precious time that, for all either of them knew, was as borrowed as the clothes resting on Sirius’ back.

They sat side-by-side on the bed. They were not quite touching, but it was as close as possible. Harry kept himself still in the way he had learnt so many years ago during his rushed, impromptu training; Aurors were immovable and unintimidatable. Sirius, eternally emotional, wrung his hands in his lap.

‘How did you know?’ He asked.

‘The Map,’ Harry said—Sirius laughed. ‘I hope it really doesn’t lie, because it showed Dumbledore too.’

There was a pause in which Sirius’ head whipped around in the same moment Harry realised his own mistake.

‘Dumbledore…?’

‘Yes.’

Sirius swallowed. ‘Who else?’

‘Sorry … I really am … but I can’t tell you. It’s not the right time. We’ve got nothing solid yet.’ Nodding, his godfather looked at his hands.

‘It won’t lie. Never has.’

‘I know.’ Harry agreed. A moment passed between them, somehow fitting itself between the inches of air that hung in the middle of them.

The suddenness of movement to check his wristwatch made Sirius jump again. Harry wondered if he had always been like this… whether he had been too occupied in believing himself possessed by Lord Voldemort to bother thinking about the lives and quirks of those around him.

‘I’ll have to meet with Kingsley soon.’ It was before both their working hours, but therefore the only hope to corner the man was to get to him before the masses.

Sirius perked up. ‘Kingsley? He’s still in the Auror Office?’

‘He’s the Minister, Sirius,’ Harry laughed deeply, amazed at how things had changed. ‘I actually—I’m an Auror now,’

Sirius’ hand scrubbed over his face, looking bemused. ‘Of course,’ he said fondly. He seemed to look off into the middle-distance. Harry imagined he was thinking of a skinny, temperamental fifteen year old boy with a bloody, bandaged hand and a proclivity for temper-tantrums. Harry moved his robe to cover his hand before he could think not to. The last thing he wanted to be faced with at this time was proof that Dolores Umbridge had ever existed.

* * *

Hermione arrived before Harry. He did not know she would be present to begin with, and how she had managed to arrive so ridiculously early to something she was not invited to baffled him.

‘Work doesn’t start for another two hours,’ Harry said. He stared at her blankly as she stared back. The door to Kingsley’s office loomed between them.

‘I thought I might get the chance to talk to you, you know, after what Ron told me last night.’ Hermione’s eyes flashed. ‘Also, Kingsley asked me to come.’

Harry gaped. ‘But—I set up a meeting with him.’

Hermione shrugged.

‘You know,’ Harry began after pausing in a teasing, wheedling sort of voice, ‘I actually, sort of, outrank you… are you sure you want to crash a meeting between—’

Kingsley opened the door before he could finish. Harry was pleased with this outcome, because Hermione’s eyes were narrowing further and further into slits with every word that left his lips.

‘You’re early too!’ Harry exclaimed, blinking between the pair who, he was beginning to notice, looked considerably fresher than he.

‘You booked a meeting with me, _Auror Potter_ ,’ Kingsley said drolly. ‘And I thought I might save you before you say something you regret to my best Wizengamot Administration and Affairs Officer.’

‘I’m sorry to say you’re too late for that, Minister,’ Hermione said breezily as she side-stepped around Kingsley in the threshold to his office. Kingsley smirked at Harry as he too turned, leaving him to find his way to the notoriously less comfortable guest chair Kingsley kept for those he didn’t like—Dawlish, especially.

Once the teacups had floated in and Harry was hanging onto his for dear life (so was Hermione—perhaps all her effort had gone into looking presentable rather than actually waking herself up), Kingsley leaned back in a way that was obliquely reminiscent of Dumbledore in the Headmaster’s office.

‘Hermione told me about what you asked her,’ he began, eyes flickering. ‘I’m not even going to question it. I don’t want to know why you’re digging up Death Eater blood magic records, and I certainly don’t want to discuss why you’ve lead one of our key welfare legislators away from a very important agreement with the Bulgarian Ministry. But, Harry… can you at least promise me that there’s a point to this? That you’re not following some obscure hunch?’

Harry exchanged a look with Hermione. They were having two different conversations at once. Kingsley thought Harry had gotten Hermione to look into Voldemort’s shady blood magic practices for the reason he truly went to her in the first place—disproving identities. Meanwhile Hermione, Harry thought, was considering the possibilities of using it to prove beyond doubt that the dead ( _the dead!_ ) were back and breathing among them. It was subject to what Ron had passed on to her, of course, which Harry thought would be just about everything… Hermione had a talent for eking out all the vital little details from her husband.

Harry straightened, unsure if he should prepare to fight to justify himself. ‘Kingsley… I can’t explain it to you until I’ve got proof. Proper, irrevocable proof. You just—you’ve got to trust me on this. I’m sorry—’

‘Harry,’ Kingsley said, ‘of course I trust you. Do you think I would be holding back with anyone else? If it _were_ anyone else, even in your own department, or mine, I would be seriously concerned you were trying to stir up something from the war. I’d assume you were in league with whoever’s masquerading as Dumbledore. As it is, it’s you. Which, thank god, is a _very_ different matter.’

‘Kingsley,’ said Hermione, ‘there is a point to this. A very good one.’

‘I should have known you would know the details.’ Kingsley said wryly. ‘What one of your three knows, the others, well…’

‘Harry didn’t tell me,’ she said tartly, ‘Ron did. And Ron worked it out himself, really. Harry insisted it was kept quiet.’

‘Good. This can’t get out, for obvious reasons. Can you imagine? The Prophet would have a field day if they knew something like this existed.’ All three of them paused, and Harry wondered if they were also thinking about possible Rita Skeeter headlines.

‘The blood magic won’t get out until we find a way to make it work.’ Harry said firmly. Both Kingsley and Hermione stared at him.

‘You’re awfully confident about it working,’ Hermione said.

‘It’s got to,’ Harry replied. Kingsley shook his head as he spoke.

‘Just get to the bottom of who these people really are.’ He sounded tired. ‘Why _did_ you need to meet me this morning?’

‘I need some wizards stationed at Hogwarts,’ Harry began. ‘Not Aurors; I don’t think there’s need for it considering there’s been no violence. And I don’t have any to spare, besides. Perhaps an Enforcement Patrol, or Hit Wizards if we can manage it.’

Kingsley’s eyebrows raised high up on his forehead. Nevertheless, he nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll talk it through with Everglade. He’s usually quite amenable.’

Hermione thumped her teacup down at the edge of Kingsley’s desk. She didn’t look particularly sorry. Harry could see a slight quiver in the hand closest to him as it retreated from the cup and folded into her lap.

‘If you don’t mind, Kingsley,’ she said, ‘I would like a chat with Harry about this. There’s been no developments on my part so far, but I will let you know as soon as I get anywhere.’

‘Of course,’ Kingsley looked concerned at Harry. ‘I’ll let you know what Everglade says when I talk to him. And—Harry, try not to get me in this early again. I’m getting rather old for it.’

Harry and Hermione returned Kingsley’s grin. Theirs, however, were significantly weaker. Harry was concerned about Hermione… about what she could have unearthed in her research, perhaps. They tried not to rush off, but it was a difficult thing especially when faced with the freedom and anonymity of empty Ministry halls. It was Harry that followed Hermione; an unconventional arrangement for them as he was usually the one charging off without a glance behind him. Hermione and Ron, of course, always followed him anyway.

She led him without a word wearing a grim, immovable expression to the Records Room that Hugo had been to yesterday. They wound through the stacks, each taller than the last, dust clogging their lungs and stinging at the corners of their eyes. Harry knew why Hermione liked this place, and perhaps why Hugo did too—some obscure hereditary love of the Hogwarts library.

Harry nearly landed atop Hermione when she halted by a stack of sketchbooks that emitted a low humming sound. He looked around them in question.

‘Nobody comes in here,’ she said, voice hushed despite the privacy. ‘Harry, It’s not about the magic tests, either,’

‘Then what—’

‘Sirius?’

‘Oh—’

‘Sirius and Dumbledore! About them! Ron told me—who else Harry?’ She had a wild look in her eyes. Harry reeled off the other names as she pressed herself against the sketchbook stack. It wobbled precariously.

‘That means it’s from the first war too,’ Hermione said weakly. ‘All the way back to the seventies… Marlene McKinnon and, god, Molly’s brother…’

‘What if it goes back to before? Like Grindlewald?’ Harry asked suddenly. Hermione buried her face in her hands and groaned.

‘ _Don’t_ , Harry,’

They stood for a moment, wrapped in decades of friendship and hardship and shared incredulity. The dust still stung, and Harry would have coughed if it weren’t for the certainty that he would create some sort of avalanche in doing so.

‘What are we going to _do_ ,’ Hermione muttered.

‘We’ll have to figure out Voldemort’s blood magic,’ Harry said softly.

‘We?’ Hermione said, ‘You mean _me_. And I’m not certain I can. That kind of magic is complicated to begin with, let alone trying to find a way to make it more acceptable to actually use on people. And I doubt there’s much on the subject that isn’t in a book that curses you as soon as you open it…’

‘Hermione, you’re brilliant.’ Harry smiled. ‘You’ll find a way, just like you always do.’

‘That’s what Ron said too,’ she said with a fond look passing over her face.

‘Well,’ Harry said after an overdrawn sigh, ‘I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.’

‘Oh, _stop_ ,’ Hermione smacked his arm hard enough to bruise, but still laughed along with him.

Harry spent the rest of his working day avoiding staring at the doors that held Sirius, Marlene, Dumbledore and Fabian Prewett. He sent a memorandum to Kingsley, a crumpled and sorry-looking piece of parchment, asking for a couple of Hit Wizards to be made available for Saint Mungo’s in light of Scrimgeour’s presence. Privately, it was so he could be alerted to any more appearances of dead people looking for help for injuries they might have collected. He wished it was not so much of a waiting game, both the returning people and scrabbling around for something he could do about the situation.

His thoughts revolved around the same cast of characters throughout the day. There was the Weasleys being faced with their uncle and perhaps, Harry dared to think, even their brother. There was Ginny, who would join them in the same shock. Dennis Creevey appeared somewhat randomly in the same string of thought as those like Amos Diggory, both of whom ashamedly barely passed through Harry’s mind anymore.

Mostly, he dwelt on Teddy and what it might mean for him if his parents appeared, not much older than him and used to a small, happy child. It was a train of thought that was more in the realm of daydreams than planning for an actual eventuality, and one that inevitably led to Harry’s own parents. How would he ever tackle knowing them as people rather than mere figments, with the all the substance of a mirage? How could he know them as parents or people when they were closer in age to their grandchildren than their son? His identity, whether he liked it or not, was built on foundations of tragedy. Who would he be if that tragedy was simply erased?

Shocked he was entertaining such thoughts, Harry left at three in the afternoon, running away from the work he was meant to be doing and the thoughts he should have probably tackled head on. He ran from the guilt of leaving confused, hurt people in cells or hospital beds, and from leaving Kingsley, Teddy, and everyone else in the dark.

Harry was thankful that running from work meant running _to_ Ginny. She left her own work immediately to ask kindly about how Sirius was, what it was like to see him, and let Harry pause to gather himself too many times to not find it frustrating inside. She held his hand and stroked it with her thumb, tracing over his wedding ring. She cried when he spoke about Sirius’ tears, and scolded him gently for calling himself just an Auror, and not the youngest ever head of the Office.

‘If Hermione can’t figure it out, then nobody can,’ she said resolutely. Harry felt intense thankfulness and joy that Ginny was there as she always was, and simply knew exactly what to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. I’ve been studying like mad, and was unsure how to write these next developments! I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless.


	10. Radio Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry listens to the radio with his family and doesn't tell the truth. Someone else listens to the radio and learns it.

A quietness descended over Harry’s life for that evening. He was itching to spend time with Sirius, Dumbledore… for a moment he began to consider even Scrimgeour. But a strange part of him was enjoying the pretence that things were normal, and that the biggest conflict in his life really was cooking dinner and paperwork. He felt immediately guilty, of course, for happily deluding himself—but Ginny was tactful, and managed to keep him occupied every ten minutes.

Lily had warmed to him in the hours since he had seen her last. It seemed she had forgotten the unforgivable slight of tidying her brother’s messes alongside her own. Rather than sulk, she sang loudly along with the radio in the way most confident children do, refusing to stray from the lyrics for anything less than questions about when dinner was ready. Her nameless acid green Pygmy Puff frequently chirped with her, still wearing it’s tiny red Christmas hat.

‘Uncle George said you had one, mum,’ she said with a mouthful of mashed potato. Harry grinned as he charmed the gravy boat to pour a generous helping over his plate.

‘I called him Arnold,’ said Ginny, ‘and I hope you’ll call yours something similar, please, just to wind Uncle Ron up.’ Lily’s eyes brightened at the same time as the fireplace surged upwards in a brighter green than the Pygmy Puff on her shoulder.

Harry and Ginny glanced at each other. He hoped it wasn’t Kingsley again… he had started to forget what good rest felt like.

‘Any left?’ Came Teddy’s voice, face barely visible. Lily shouted ‘Yes!’ so loudly that her Christmas present squeaked and rolled to hide in the shadow of the warmth of the gravy boat, trembling.

Harry looked worriedly over to the leftovers, but didn’t know why he had bothered. There was, as always, plenty enough for a reduced family such as theirs, and Harry usually added a strange portion-and-a-half by default, Albus or James always lingering somewhere in the back of his mind. More often than not, it found a second life as Teddy’s meal anyway and Harry was pleased good food would not go to waste.

‘Sausage and mash, lovely,’ Teddy said as he stumbled out of the grate, rubbing his hands together looking gleeful. He made a bee-line to the pot that stood waiting on the kitchen side.

‘Does your grandmother never feed you?’ Ginny asked, rolling her eyes as she cut up a sausage.

‘You know what Nan’s like,’ he said as he took a dessert spoon and began slopping mash onto the plate he had summoned, ‘ _Supper at six-fifteen, only!_ —(Harry was startled at how good his impression of Andromeda was even when he wasn’t morphing into her)—and if I miss it I have to fend for myself… scavenge, beg… or, well, come here. Thanks, Ginny!’

Teddy pushed Lily smoothly over to the other side of the table-bench to make room for himself. The gravy boat only spilt a little on its summoned journey over to him, and Harry knew Teddy had noticed because he was looking rather self-satisfied all of a sudden.

Ginny told Teddy that it was Harry, in fact, that had made the meal tonight as Lily scowled while picking miniscule pieces of food from her Pygmy Puff’s hair, her own dinner forgotten. 

They chattered about rubbish for a while, and Teddy seemed lulled into a sense of comfort and security before: ‘Why d’you keep missing meals?’ Lily asked suspiciously, with the well-practiced manner and timing of a younger sibling who can sense when something might get an older brother in trouble.

They all laughed as Teddy struggled to swallow a full forkful of potato in his shock; his throat convulsed, his eyes bulged for a second, and the very tips of his hair flashed a lurid pink for nothing more than a glimpse. ‘I’ve—uh—I’ve been keeping up with friends, you know. Getting on top of sending letters out to them.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said, exchanging a glance with Ginny, ‘Victorie’s been needing a lot of help with her homework recently, hasn’t she?’

‘Don’t help her too much, Ted, she’ll never pass her exams otherwise.’

It certainly wasn’t Teddy’s abilities that made his face turn pink. Lily crowed in delight at this turn of events and immediately began to jab fun at him. Teddy shovelled the remainder of his mashed potato into his mouth to avoid answering, looking for all the world as if he was the twelve year old Harry still thought of him as.

Harry wandered, suddenly, if this was what It would have been like with Sirius if they had caught Pettigrew before he escaped. Maybe Lupin would have been around, too. Already the thought spiralled into imagination, beyond the Dursleys that he never saw anymore and back into a world that Lord Voldemort had never really touched. It was alien to think of, to picture those he had seen in the Mirror of Erised around a large table like he and the Weasleys had been at the Christmas lunch just past. Utterly bizarre to imagine looking to your neighbour at the table and being able to spot, clear as day, traits he had inherited rather than simply passed on as with his children. Harry had had nearly thirteen years to become used to blood family, and even that still took him aback sometimes.

‘Harry.’ —Ginny had been dragging him from his head for hours, and this was no exception— ‘I’ll put these away. Put on the Wireless, will you?’

The ghost of her hand was still warm on his forearm as Harry nodded and moved to the living room. Lily had not noticed his pause, but he thought Teddy might have—he stared for a moment too long in the doorway of the kitchen before turning his back to slump into his usual spot on the sofa.

Lily placed her Pygmy Puff in his cage, where he rolled around squeaking softly on the heated material that lay at the bottom. Teddy lazily (still a little smug about being able to use magic whenever he pleased, though he would never admit it) pointed his wand at the fireplace which flared merrily red and gold. Ginny’s voice came through the doorway in little snippets of household charms.

The Wireless was on the mantlepiece, next to a picture of Teddy and a small James holding a large, sticky gobstopper each. Fiddling with the dials, Harry felt quite at home, and almost as if he were back in the Gryffindor common room.

Warbling noises music drifting around him, Harry shoved Teddy’s feet from one end of the sofa and sat down in their place. He folded his back into the cushions to make himself comfortable, and dug his chin into his chest while he took off his glasses to scrub them against his top.

‘What’s all this on the news, then?’ Teddy asked, though he was nothing but a blur in Harry’s eyes.

‘Well if you’d listened to the news you would know, wouldn’t you?’

‘You know what I mean. You must be dealing with it.’

‘And if I was? So what?’

‘ _So_ …’ Harry replaced his glasses and saw his godson peering at him with wide eyes, ‘what’s the point to it all?’

‘Does anybody in this house understand what _confidential_ means,’ Harry muttered, turning to face Teddy fully. ‘Look, Ted, I can’t tell you anything because we don’t know much yet.’

‘But how are they doing it?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Don’t know, or don’t want to say?’

‘ _Both_.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ He huffed and turned to stare at the bookshelf. Teddy was trying to give the impression he was reading the titles, but Harry could see he was just moving his eyes in the right directions as he tried to think about what to say next. He sighed.

‘No, people pretending to be your parents have not shown up.’ Teddy whipped around in surprise. ‘And I would have told you if they had. _Really_.’

‘Oh,’ he looked conflicted. Harry thought he could understand—even if they were imposters, they would look like Remus and Tonks so accurately that to glimpse them in the flesh rather than a photograph was obscenely tempting. Harry felt the same… his only memories of Lily and James were from a few precious photographs or through the eyes of their murderer, which he was hardly going to count as a good thing.

Harry found it hard to say much when he thought Remus and Tonks could very well crop up… but also very well might not. He could not bring himself to mention anything about the truth of the matter to Teddy, because he knew that his mind would go immediately to his parents, as did Harry’s own. The surprise of their being alive was better than the lifetime of waiting and hoping that faced Teddy if he knew it was, somehow, a possibility.

It was, of course, only a matter of time before Teddy found out that Sirius, Dumbledore and the rest were who they appeared to be. They would have to re-join the world at some point, Hermione’s discovery pending. But Harry couldn’t bring himself to have that conversation just yet. Selfishly, he did not want to be the one to break the news. But for that matter… he couldn’t imagine anyone else telling Teddy that, yes, dead people had come back, but no, sorry, not _your_ parents, how could _you_ ever be so lucky? How could Harry have Sirius back, and then look Teddy in the eye and tell him _sorry, not for you_?

An impasse. So, Harry would put it off before he had to deal with it, like Divination homework. God only knew what he and Teddy would do if Remus and Tonks actually did come back.

And then Teddy was distracted by Lily asking him for Pygmy Puff names, and he started throwing out the names of his old professors or textbook authors. And Harry pressed himself into the sofa with a cup of milky tea Ginny brought him.

‘I’m going to have to visit the others,’ Harry said quietly into the darkness of their bedroom hours later. The radio spun a tune into the air softly.

‘Probably,’ Ginny’s voice was muffled by sleep and the duvet.

* * *

Bright and early, feeling guilty about the abysmal hours he spent at his actual workplace, Harry arrived at Saint Mungo’s. Nothing had changed since he had last been here, for Lily’s broken wrist—the old mannequins and tiles made him feel as if he would find badly disguised reporters behind every corner.

There were still people staring and the occasional healer stopping in their tracks, but mostly everyone was a little too tired to think too hard about the celebrity in their midst, which worked for Harry perfectly.

The wizard behind the desk gawked at him as he stood in front of it, placing his Auror identification in front of him. The wizard didn’t even glance at it.

‘I’m here to see the occupant of room seven hundred and thirteen. He’s under investigation.’ Harry paused. ‘I’m an Auror.’

‘I know.’ The wizard whispered back.

They stared at each other. Harry flattened his fringe, which of course meant the stare was levelled wholly at his forehead.

Slowly, without removing his gaze, the wizard—Bletchley, his badge said—slid the Auror card towards himself. He scribbled, still keeping half an eye on Harry’s face, the identification number upside down on a small square of parchment off to a forgotten side of the desk, which Harry was certain wasn’t official in any way. Wanting to get out of the situation, he scribbled his name onto the clipboard on the visitor’s side of the desk, nodded his head, and veritably sprinted away, ending up in a lift with a witch who had bright blue scales crawling up her arm. She didn’t even glance up.

As she stepped out onto the third floor—plants and potions, Harry was unsurprised—Harry was left alone to contemplate where he should actually go. Unlike what he remembered of Muggle hospitals, there were no helpful room numbers. Instead, a long list of wards under the various magical injuries possible denoted by floor.

Usually the suspects he visited here had done silly things to evade capture like crashing a broomstick (ground floor) or injuring themselves with their poisons (third floor). But this was an as yet unknown case…

Deciding to go with where he thought they might reasonably keep someone dangerous, Harry left the lift at the fourth floor, for spell damage. It was eerily quiet and his footsteps thundered and bounced like he was disrupting a silent séance. There was no Welcome Witch or Wizard here; no desk or waiting area. The only waiting people seemed to do here, Harry thought grimly, was for bad news.

After five minutes of aimless wondering and one mis-turn that started him down a corridor of rooms labelled only in intervals of five, Harry turned a blessed corner that revealed Thomas Cresswell leaning sulkily against a near wall.

‘Harry!’ He immediately chirped up. ‘Didn’t know you were coming in!’

‘Neither did I,’ Harry replied. Then he looked around. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be a Hit Wizard around here? Rather than you?’

Thomas harrumphed. ‘He got the squits. Reckon he went out last night. Pretty young really, it’s lucky he wasn’t here because he’d probably be sick at the sight of you.’

‘Charming,’ Harry said dully, choosing not to point out that Thomas was merely in his late twenties and therefore in no position to call anybody young. ‘Where’s the Healer? I need to speak to them before I go in—’

‘Good luck with that.’ He shook his head. ‘Nobody’s been in other than them, apparently he started kicking off as soon as he saw red robes so they stopped trying to question him.’

Not surprising at all, Harry thought. Considering for all Scrimgeour knew they were working for Voldemort’s Ministry now. He almost wished Dawlish had had time to take a turn watching the hospital room; Scrimgeour would have definitely hit the roof if he saw his old colleague.

‘Which way is the office? I’ll try and ask them if there’s any chance—’

‘My apologies, Mr Potter,’ said Healer Pye, rounding a corner, ‘Nobody’s getting into that room other than my Healers.’

‘Why?’ Harry asked, thinking of leaving Scrimgeour in a horrible limbo where he still thought Voldemort was in power and likely assumed he would be assassinated at any given second.

‘I should ask your own Aurors about that. I’m sure Auror Dawlish would have some warnings for you.’

Harry tried not to smirk, but he caught Thomas’ eye and both their lips quivered attempting to hold in sniggers. Healer Pye frowned at them.

‘Enough said,’ Harry replied, thinking dreamily of all the things he would say to Dawlish when he next saw him. ‘How is he doing?’

‘Well we haven’t found anything wrong with him, other than some strange habits.’

‘Habits?’

‘He tends to twitch a lot, and he stares at the newspapers we give him for hours. He calmed down once we started giving him his creature comforts, like the morning paper, of course—but that can be expected.’

Harry didn’t know what could be expected, but he didn’t need to think much about it either because his mind was galloping away in another direction.

‘Did you say he calmed down once he got hold of a newspaper? Which newspaper?’

‘My,’ the Healer looked taken aback. ‘Well—just that morning’s. As I recall there was a rather good article about the new laws the Minister is bringing in. You know, about regulating foreign potion ingredients and such.’

Of course, Harry didn’t know. But he knew that it would certainly mention the Minister’s name, and somewhere in that paper would be also be the day’s date.

‘And is he listening to the radio much?’ Harry continued as Thomas stared curiously. ‘I assume you’ve given him one of those too?’

‘He never stops listening to it.’ The Healer said. He moved over to the door when Thomas shuffled out of the way. Harry peered in through the small square window and saw Rufus Scrimgeour in incongruous hospital robes, staring into the middle distance in a fold-out chair.

‘It’s on constantly,’ Healer Pye said. ‘Even when he sleeps. But we’re not sure he does much of that, either, because he wakes up as soon as we walk in. Good as gold since he got it though, good as gold.’

Of course he started behaving himself after getting a radio—he had heard Kingsley, his old colleague, give a long speech about _people who looked like the war-dead appearing_. News bulletins would have made it plain as day that it was peacetime. Harry’s name was probably mentioned, and if there was anything to indicate Lord Voldemort was not in power, it was Harry’s name being referenced.

Harry stared at the side profile of Scrimgeour’s head like he had with Dumbledore’s. In just the same way, the old Minister turned.

He and Harry stared at each other for a few seconds before Scrimgeour’s lips lifted into a tiny smirk. Then, he turned to face the wall where his radio sat.

The old bastard knew _exactly_ what was going on. He had put it together and was now waiting, quietly in his make-shift prison cell, for Harry to prove it.

‘Let’s keep him in here for now,’ Harry told the Healer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this particularly hard to get written, and I'm sorry about the little delay. Hopefully will be back to fortnightly after this.


	11. Parchment Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry receives letters from his children, retrieves files in the Ministry, and has a closer look at the Marauder's Map with Ginny's help.

**Chapter 11: Parchment Pieces**

* * *

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_Dad—I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of the teachers but Victoire really did deserve it. She ignores me when we’re at school even though everyone talks to me because of you. So, she shouldn’t be embarrassed in front of her friends like she is! I don’t understand it at all because she’s fine over the holidays. The only time she talks to me is to laugh at my hair—Al and Fred told me to ignore her and Louis is too busy with Lucia most of the time so he didn’t help at all even though it’s his sister. She knows it annoys me so she does it to impress her friends I think. I’ve been telling her I’m glad she’s leaving soon but she just seems happy about it._

_If it makes you feel better Jigger gave me two detentions. I think it would have been worse if it had been McGonagall so thanks for disappearing off when you did. What were you doing? You looked very stressed. Was it cool Auror stuff? People keep asking and some girl keeps cornering me in the Great Hall. Was it to do with that radio thing?_

_It was on in the common room and everyone’s been reading the transcript in the_ Prophet _. Dead people! Can you tell me what’s going on please. I am having to make stuff up at the moment and I don’t think they’re going to buy it for much longer._

_Also please send the Map back. I don’t know if you meant to steal it, but still._

_Mum—thank you for nan’s biscuits. Molly ate most of them. Please send more in flavours she doesn’t like._

_Miss you both lots._

_Love, James_

_P.s.: Professor Longbottom told me to say thank you for sending on the cuttings. I don’t know what he was talking about but it was very embarrassing because he said it in front of everybody. Next time send him a letter because can’t take much more of this._

* * *

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_James is moping a lot. I think it might be a bit about his detentions. He doesn’t even say anything when I tell him he was being stupid and he deserves them. He must be upset about Victoire ignoring him because they spent a lot of time talking about Quidditch over Christmas. I don’t think it’s very fair that she keeps making fun of his hair because she hasn’t said anything to me and I have the same hair as well as glasses, which must be even worse. Also, Rose’s hair is definitely worse than ours._

_Also Dad, what’s going on with all that stuff on the radio? I keep getting asked by a lot of Hufflepuffs, and I don’t know what to say so I just shrug and look thick. Mo from Slytherin that I have Charms with said I should ask you but I told him you wouldn’t say much because the Ministry probably made you make an Unbreakable Vow or something. He thought that was a bit much._

_If you want, you can tell me and I can pretend you didn’t. I might have to start making things up like James is. The Hufflepuffs are really starting to turn up everywhere._

_Hagrid says hello to you both and that he thought he saw Dad by the Lake the other day but he couldn’t be sure. I think he was a bit upset that you didn’t visit him when you were here so maybe just send him a letter and lie tell him you weren’t on the grounds at least. He has been talking a lot about Manticores recently and it’s making me nervous._

_Please let me know about the dead people. Thanks for sending my socks. Rose ate all the shortbread so please send more because I didn’t get any. Was nice to see you Dad._

_Love from—_

_Al_

* * *

Kingsley’s address was the talk of Hogwarts, apparently. As Ginny leaned over his shoulder and started muttering darkly about Ron and Rose, Harry thought about the reactions that could follow, and quickly felt stressed about the public speeches he would have to make shortly.

‘They’re going to be little demons when they find out,’ Ginny said, shaking her head. ‘They won’t leave Sirius alone, that’s for sure.’

Harry struggled with how flippant Ginny was about the whole situation. He loved it anyway.

‘I’m visiting Fabian Prewett tomorrow,’ he said slowly, ‘anything you’d like me to mention?’

‘I never knew him. All I know is that he was—is—ginger.’ Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Shut up. I can hardly ask Mum, can I? Anyway, tell me about Scrimgeour again. Are you sure he knows?’

‘He grinned at me. I think he finds it funny.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Harry, you couldn’t know that. Stop being dramatic.’

‘Thank you for kindly sending me crashing back to Earth.’

‘ _Somebody’s_ got to keep the Chosen One on their toes.’

‘Please don’t keep calling me that. George has only just stopped.’

* * *

Harry was half expecting to find Hugo drifting among the shelves of the record room. He already had Scrimgeour’s file on his desk, and he hadn’t delegated retrieving the files of Fabian and Marlene to anyone on his team. It made him uncomfortable when he knew—because he had doled them out—that his team were busy working their own cases. Or, even worse, were working on the same case he was. And were spending their hours agonising over the non-existent problem of suspects masquerading as Sirius Black et al.

So, breathing in enough dust to make up for not smoking ten pipes a day, Harry shuffled nervously amongst the _P_ s while hoping the stacks of parchment wouldn’t collapse on him. They threatened to crush him with every step he took, and he half expected wild entities to swoop above him. It felt more like a habitat than a records room; it was certainly more alive than any piece of parchment had the right to be.

Before long, he found Fabian Prewett’s bundle and pilfered it from the shelf it lay forgotten on. It was joined with a fraying piece of twine to his brother’s. Harry felt melancholic … it was too close to Fred and George, even now that the years spent with Fred were painfully outnumbered by those still haunted by his loss.

Fabian’s body had been found in an alleyway near the Ministry, just off Tottenham Court Road. It was discovered by a Muggle leaving their bookshop late. Harry stared at the dark picture accompanying the files—two pairs of feet in sharp focus in the foreground, a blackened pool around them and the rest of the bodies. Unrecognisable torsos, a left hand unattached. A small pile of something dark, oozing and greasy looking next to the left-hand corpse; Fabian’s. A Dark Mark hovering over the feet, the only thing moving. The right-hand body without a face in the dim light of the Mark and, Harry knew, without one in reality either.

He moved on to find Marlene’s file.

Illogically, the _M_ s were four rows back from where he came. He retraced his steps and saw, beneath her name on her file, a scrawled ‘ _see McKinnon A. P. J. H. & T._’ Her family.

As he walked back to his department, keeping half an eye out for Hugo and following the brightness of the lights and the shuddering noise of the Ministry lifts, Harry gritted his teeth. How to explain this?

The Cells—quickly becoming over-subscribed with occupants—loomed in the near-distance far too quickly. As Harry slid into Fabian Prewett’s prison, he was at a loss for words. Luckily, it was not a plight shared.

‘You’re not James Potter, are you?’ Fabian said immediately, straightening his back and watching Harry through narrow eyes as he drew his wand around the doorframe casting privacy charms.

‘No.’

‘Where’s my brother?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why are you lying?’

They stared at each other. Fabian had no energy in his voice. He seemed to sense the truth had no more promise than a comforting lie. Harry thought about what Ginny had advised he do to prove his trustworthiness to these people, Order members, that he had never met.

‘I’m going to tell you some things you won’t believe. You probably won’t want to believe them either. But, to prove I’m not a Death Eater …’ Harry’s Patronus came easily to him now that he had the memories of the births of three children stored in his mind. Prongs appeared instantaneously before him, his head still, drooped in calm, as Harry had barely ever seen it. He supposed Prongs could sense the lack of urgency.

‘Give Fabian Prewett the message that all is well.’

Prongs paused and raised his head. He stared into Harry’s eyes. He did not dissolve as he ran away as he usually did, for the recipient was in the same room.

As Prongs turned to face Fabian and Harry’s voice rang out in a perfect copy, Fabian gasped. Harry knew what he was thinking; only the Order knew how to do this. It was especially secret in the Order’s first iteration too, likely a new discovery of Dumbledore’s in the year Fabian likely thought it still was: nineteen seventy-eight.

‘My name is Harry Potter,’ Harry said, gently throwing his wand towards Fabian who caught it with his mouth still agape.

‘I was … I was in a duel. I think I got knocked out. I can’t remember. And they—and then—’

‘You died, Mr Prewett.’ Harry placed the file, without the picture, onto the bed next to Fabian. ‘You were in a duel with Death Eaters. You were hit by a nasty curse.’

‘Gideon …’

‘The same.’

In the achingly familiar way Ron looked when he was trying not to cry, Fabian’s eyes filled with tears. He was muttering between long, rattling breaths. His fingers curled and uncurled compulsively around the parchment that bore his death date.

After a minute of discomfort, he looked up. ‘I don’t understand how I am here. You say I died.’

‘You did. But you came back.’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘It goes against everything we know about magic, yes.’ Harry said. ‘But here you are. Years later.’

Harry hoped he would not ask how long he had been gone for. It was cruel, to tell him such a hard truth. Fabian was grappling enough as it was. He had begun to shake even has the cloudiness receded from his eyes as he moved through the shock.

‘Is You-Know-Who still …?’

‘No.’ Fabian’s mouth opened with a question Harry could already answer, even if he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. ‘And he likely won’t come back, like you have.’

Fabian nodded. ‘Has my brother—?’

Harry shook his head. ‘No, not yet. We don’t know anything about how this works … how this is happening. But we have hope.’

Silence. Then— ‘Molly! The boys! Are they—did they—’

‘All fine,’ Harry smiled. It was bizarre to talk about the Weasleys at such a distance. He did not, wisely, broach the subject of Fred’s death.

‘If everything is all right,’ Fabian said slowly, ‘Why am I here? Why was I arrested?’

‘Not many people know the truth, at the moment.’ Harry began. ‘We have to find a way to prove it. Properly, so everyone will know without a doubt.’

‘Oh.’ He leaned back, shoulders by his ears, eyes watery, arms crossed rigidly.

‘I can’t tell you any more … there’s nothing else to tell. I can’t help you other than keep you safe here until we find a way. I hope you are being treated well.’

A long pause followed. Fabian said nothing after nodding absently in answer and moved only to push Harry’s wand away from him towards the foot of his bed. Harry scrambled for what to say … he had expected countless questions about the future, about what year it was, about what the Weasleys were doing now. But Fabian stared at the wall.

After all … if Harry had woken in such a way after, say, being in Malfoy Manor or defeating Lord Voldemort, what questions would he have had? He struggled to fathom it. Inexplicably, Harry felt awkward over anything else. He knew nothing of this man other than the fact he should have shared many Christmas Dinners with him by now. He had planned to let the dead lead the conversation, not interrupt and be stumped by a little silence.

But Fabian continued to stare blankly. It was a tenuous quiet, and Harry was intruding. As if he could read his thoughts, Fabian finally spoke as Harry rose to retrieve his wand and leave him to his melancholy, hesitant because of the short amount of time they had spent together.

‘What if this is all a dream?’ He asked. ‘What if this is what happens when you die or I’m in a coma? What if this is all happening in my head?’

Harry glanced down at himself, hand on the door-knob and wand reaching out to summon Fabian’s file. He looked almost as tired and scruffy as Remus did when he was teaching.

‘Do I look like someone you’d see guiding people to the afterlife?’

Fabian cracked a grin for the first time since Harry had known him. It made him look very, very young.

* * *

Harry told Ginny all about Fabian over the comfort of warm mugs of tea and the Marauder’s Map spread between them (she had been watching James suspiciously). It was only when he spoke about Marlene that things changed.

‘She was amazing,’ Harry said. ‘She was like McGonagall—so matter-of-fact, you know. When I gave her my wand she completely calmed down. She had all these ideas about why it was happening, she could give Hermione a run for her money. I’d never had thought somebody could take it in her stride like that.

‘She was telling me about her own death, actually correcting her file—I could have sworn she knew she’d died and come back. Benji Fenwick—doesn’t that name ring a bell?—alerted her and Fabian and Gideon about a Ministry spy. That’s why it all happened, why they all died. I bet it was Rookwood. Remember him? I bet that’s why nobody ever found Fenwick, he’ll probably turn up in the Department of Mysteries before long—’

‘You’re thriving off of this, aren’t you?’ Ginny interrupted. Her face was inscrutable over her mug. Her eyes were determinedly seeking out James’ dot on the Map again, or perhaps Albus’. Anything to conveniently avoid Harry’s eyes.

Harry was speechless; he gabbled some aborted, half-hearted words.

‘It’s not bad,’ she said. ‘I just … don’t want you to get your hopes up.’

They sat in a contemplative silence. Harry watched Professor Slughorn slowly wander around, incongruous as he was outside of the lower floors of the castle. ‘I’m trying not to.’ He began. ‘It’s just—’

‘Harry.’ Her hand raised quickly. ‘Shut up.’

‘Well,’ He was offended. ‘That’s not—’

‘ _Harry!_ ’ He decided to pick his battles and shut up. He moved to Ginny’s shoulder, to look at what she was staring at.

‘He looks like he’s just going back to the Common Room,’ Harry frowned, staring at James’ dot on Seventh Floor with her. ‘I don’t see—’

‘ _Look!_ ’

He followed her finger. It led to the corridor that housed the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. It was empty, apart from a single, pacing dot that simply disappeared from the Map before their eyes.

‘What were you just saying?’ Harry asked weakly.

Ginny ignored him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to avoid repetitiveness in Harry explaining the situation to the previously dead people. So there won't be many more play-by-plays of explaining what's happened to them. Or, not as many. And if there are, it'll be different. It's been decent amount of time now... I'm sure they're starting to figure it out for themselves.


	12. The Room of Requirement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry, Ginny and McGonagall track down some old friends on the Seventh Floor.

**Chapter 12: The Room of Requirement**

* * *

Eyes blurring from staring so long at the same spot, Harry barely found it within himself to move. ‘I—Ginny—oh my god, I’ve got to get over there—’

He stumbled away from the table and towards the kitchen fireplace. It was smaller than their usual floo exit, but he certainly wasn’t bothered by having to stoop like he usually was. Harry’s hands shook as floo powder slipped through his fingers, softer than sand but heavier than sugar.

‘I’m coming too.’ Ginny said, grabbing her wand from the table. ‘I spotted her. I’ve got a right to come.’

Harry wasn’t so sure about that reasoning, but was surer than anything that, if he were Ginny, he would not tolerate being left at home for this for a single second. Nor would he expect her to.

They stumbled, one after the other, towards the fireplace. He was sure Ginny was still in her slippers. He was wearing a holey jumper, and neither of them cared the slightest before—

‘Mum? Dad?’ Lily shuffled into the room, eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Are you flooing somewhere? Where are you going?’

Stumped in the face of a nine year old, Harry began making indistinct noises that wouldn’t pass for an explanation to a toddler, let alone a critically thinking and naturally mistrustful child. He was quite shocked he had briefly forgotten the existence of his youngest child. Harry felt very lucky that Ginny, at least, held her cool.

‘You’re off to Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione’s; we’ve got to dash off!’

‘Oh. But it’s—’ she looked at the clock, ‘—half past eight at night. Do they know I’m coming? Is this like that time when—’

‘Just tell them we’ve gone to Hogwarts, they’ll know what we’re talking about.’

Lily immediately brightened. Her suspicion was dropped in favour of asking to go to the school with them, even as they gradually manoeuvred her towards the grate. She was still trying to emotionally manipulate them into allowing her to tag along (‘ _I’ll be quiet, I won’t run off, I promise!_ ’) when they pressed floo powder into her hand and shouted Ron and Hermione’s address for her.

They wouldn’t be allowed to forget about this for some time, Harry thought, as she stared grumpily at her parents as she was enveloped in green flame and whisked away.

‘God, I hope they’re in,’ Ginny muttered, shaking some soot from her knee. She cast an eye around the kitchen and let out a long, loud sigh.

As was becoming customary, Harry rocketed out of the fireplace of Professor McGonagall’s office without preamble (a portrait’s disgruntled voice echoed down an _‘I say!_ ’). She was writing at the grand desk, or had been, as her head cracked upwards and she clutched at her chest. It reminded Harry of her age, and he decided, not for the first time in his life, to attempt to refine his flooing technique.

‘Mr Potter—’ she began, before stopping as Ginny stepped out behind Harry with barely a noise. Something about this seemed the last straw for McGonagall. She didn’t need to speak, for Harry knew she was asking him whether it had happened again. He nodded and felt the atmosphere in the room turn as McGonagall thrummed with excitement and fear.

‘It’s happened again. I saw them by the Room of Requirement,’ Ginny said. She was breathless.

‘Who?’

‘Tonks.’ The word rushed out of Ginny’s mouth where air did not. Her flushed cheeks made her face almost the same as when they had been carried from the Chamber of Secrets by Fawkes all those years ago; a churning mixture of wonderment, fear and joy.

McGonagall stood, rattling her desk. The inkpot teetered dangerously on the edge, but they paid it no mind. ‘Well,’ she said as her eyes flickered between them both, ‘we had better see for ourselves.’

Harry wanted to speak on the journey up, wanted to discuss and theorise, but he had not the faintest idea of what to say. Questions grew, lived and shrivelled before he had the chance the grasp them; speculation turned to smoke and wisps before it could pass his lips. The others might have been feeling the same, for the only noise was the stalking sound of their footsteps on the stone as they made their way up through the castle.

The tapestry which had featured in so many of Harry’s nightmares was innocuous against the wall. The entry to the Come and Go Room looked dormant, the walls as solid and ancient as they always appeared. Harry, Ginny and McGonagall exchanged looks in the candlelight; there were no windows and the winter sun had died long ago anyway. The shadows flickered and the heavy air was lost on none of them.

Wordlessly, Harry stood in front of the wall with his hands married together in front of him, pondering what to say, think or believe. Ginny and McGonagall moved to the side and stared at him as he tried to find a useable phrase.

_I need to find those that were lost_ … too vague. _I need to find Tonks_ , perhaps? _Show me Tonks_?

But then Harry thought of the sentience of the Room, of how it always knew. How it directed him to the Horcrux, and how it had provided the DA with endless training supplies and books for their lessons that were perfectly suited to the topic of the moment. Perhaps he did not need to focus on closing the loopholes. Perhaps he should think about what really needed to happen, what he really wanted from the Room. He did not need a single, defining phrase, after all.

_Show me the person I need to see_ he thought, beginning his pacing. _Show me the person I need to see … Show me Tonks … Show me_ _anyone_ _that needs me … that needs us …_

When McGonagall gasped, Harry knew a door had appeared. He was unsure if she had ever seen the Room materialise. The door was simple: wooden and plain. The handle was burnished bronze, and the planks of what looked like oak were pockmarked with age. With a jolt, he saw that it was the same door of Dumbledore’s Army, no longer polished or proud, but wearied.

All three stared at it, all three Gryffindors afraid of what could lie behind it—because, despite it all and despite the Map’s infallibly truthful record, a glimmer of doubt had rooted itself in the back of Harry’s head, always whispering that it could be a trick.

As the nearest, Harry moved rather reluctantly towards the door. His shaking hand closed around the handle and he swallowed before asking Ginny and McGonagall with a look if they were ready; pale, both nodded.

The room beyond was a strange imitation of the Gryffindor Common Room with alterations that made no sense to Harry. There were round windows next to mustard-yellow shelves, copious green plants hanging from the ceiling on coils of chain and rope, sturdy hewn hammocks dangling empty against the right-hand wall. But it was the Gryffindor that overpowered it all; deep armchairs and lumpy scarlet cushions, tapestries threaded in gold, broad bookshelves carved with lion’s heads. Even the fireplace’s warmth turned the Room into a place that Harry relaxed into instinctively, like a favourite old jumper.

He could not take time to bask in the warmth of either the fire or kind memories, because a girl walked into the room and froze at the sight of them.

It was Lavender Brown, eyes rounded, dressed in a large dark jumper and comfortable looking trousers. She wore not an ounce of the girliness Harry remembered of her; but perhaps she had grown out of that during the Carrows’ regime and Harry had failed to notice in the drama that followed his return to Hogwarts at that time.

When Ginny breathed her name, Harry remembered that his wife would know Lavender just as well, for they had spent that year and all the other Hogwarts years together too. They had certainly grown out of any childishness together under the Carrows.

Ginny took a step towards Lavender, who immediately stepped backwards. Her chest heaved and her mouth dropped open, and her too-practiced eyes flicked backwards and forwards over their faces, their postures and their undrawn wands. She was deciding if they were going to attack her, even as her eyes began filling with tears at the sight of them.

‘Do you …’ Lavender was uncharacteristically speechless. ‘Do you know? That it’s me? On the radio—you said—but we _are_ us—really …’ she burst into tears, and Ginny ran, pulling her into a crushing embrace that tangled their hair and caught fingers in their clothes.

‘Morgana,’ said McGonagall as Harry’s eyes watered, watching Ginny comfort a seventeen year old girl who had died a horrific, violent death and did not deserve a single scratch of it.

‘Oh Lavender, we _know_ , it’s all right,’ Ginny said, eyes wet.

‘We figured it out and then we tried to find other people we knew but it was all so strange, and I saw someone I thought was Harry for a second and I tried to speak to him but when I saw him closer his face was all _wrong_ —’

Sniffing, Lavender pulled away from Ginny. As she rubbed her face she caught the eye of McGonagall and muttered a quiet apology.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Miss Brown,’ said McGonagall. Her voice was taut and strained, and Harry knew that the emotions draping over the room like a large cloak had not avoided her.

‘Lavender?’ Came a shout from the doorway. ‘Where’ve you gone, are you all right?’

Lavender looked up quickly and stared at Ginny with owlish eyes. The steps, muffled from carpet but approaching all the same, did not drown out her quiet _‘oh—‘_

Fred Weasley emerged from behind the ajar door in blue striped pyjama bottoms and a threadbare jumper with a large purple letter _G_ in the centre of it. His youth was agonising in the face of decades of George aging painfully, reluctantly, every change and crease a reminder that the life he led was forever divided into the _before_ and _after_ his twin’s existence. And the most painful of all, Harry was sure his face bore the same slight smile he had when he had died.

‘Merlin’s balls,’ said Fred stepping forwards, brown eyes—Ginny’s eyes—wide as Lavender’s had been. After a second of staring he craned his head over his shoulder and bellowed: ‘COME IN HERE!’

When he turned back to them he grinned the wicked grin that George rarely wore, that Harry had not realised he had missed so desperately. ‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘you’re so … _middle-aged_. Professor, you’ve aged wonderfully, I wish I could say the same to you Harry, Gin—’ 

In the same moment that Harry emitted a startled laugh, groaning from his unexpected, disbelieving chest, Ginny flew towards her elder brother in a whirl of red hair.

Harry, too, moved towards Fred without ever making the decision to. He stopped perhaps a few feet away, watching as Fred’s eyes grew wide at his sister’s tears and clinging to him. It seemed he had not expected this, though Harry was unsure what he could have expected and was a little concerned that he was so unprepared for meeting the rest of his family too.

And wasn’t that a dream come true?

Soon enough, Ginny pulled away from her brother. She moved, instead, to stand by Harry and grip his arm while her other hand concentrated on wiping her face. Harry and Fred stared at each other, both looking for similarities and differences from what they knew.

‘Look at the Chosen One,’ Fred said without the usual bite around the name because his eyes were too wet with tears to carry it off, ‘getting a little grey around the temples, aren’t you?’

Harry laughed and it was a watery, unsteady thing, as he tried to tell Fred to shut up before drawing him into a hug. It was bizarre, but right—Harry relived every blissful summer as a child going to the Weasleys after spending weeks in a single room at the Dursley’s, of having people who, for once, wanted to see him.

And then he saw, over Fred’s shoulder, Teddy’s most long-held hope of all.

Tonks had vivid yellow hair which could have made Harry cry at the very thought of seeing again. When she walked through the door Fred and Lavender had a wide smile broke across her face the instant she saw McGonagall. While Lavender and Fred were wearing comfortable clothes, she was wearing an incongruous Hogwarts uniform; and with it Harry would have expected nothing less than the Hufflepuff crest she wore on the drooping jumper, yellow and black tie loose around her unbuttoned neck. Holding the hand which was brushed by a torn sleeve trailed a dubious Remus Lupin.

Death had been kind to him. He was not free of scars and scratches, but he had no purple under his eyes and even in his surprise of locking eyes with Harry he held himself with quiet calm and confidence. Was this the last few days that had given him this? Or was it, Harry asked himself guiltily, gathered slowly over the time he, Hermione and Ron had spent away from them horcrux hunting?

Remus looked delighted, truly delighted, for perhaps the first time Harry had ever seen. He strode over to Harry and clasped either hand on his shoulders; now they were not only of the same height, but of the same age.

‘Well _done_ , Harry,’ his eyes glinted. ‘You did it, you killed him.’

It took an ashamedly long split-second for Harry to quite catch what he meant. To these people—two of whom were Teddy’s age—Lord Voldemort was a real threat that had not been dampened by age or thought. It was days since they had been faced with his servants, not years upon years.

‘Oh,’ Harry said, voice wobbling, ‘I—thanks—’

‘ _Remus_ ,’ came Fred’s voice, ‘I think that’s old news, mate, you better catch up—’

Remus rolled his eyes fondly, glanced at his wife, and pulled Harry into a tight hug. Harry couldn’t quite believe it, could not journey through the last few steps of his imagination to allow reality to take hold.

‘Sorry,’ Harry said gruffly as he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, lodging his glasses in his hair.

‘Oh please,’ came Tonks’ voice, ‘you’re not the only one sobbing your heart out, you should have seen Remus when he found out about your kids!’

‘My kids?’ Harry asked, looking up to a sly grin on Tonks’ face.

‘I’ve been stalking anyone called Weasley trying to get the gossip.’ She said airily, with the hint of a waver in her voice. ‘Then, of course, I saw your little lookalike.’

‘Al,’ Ginny said with a watery smile, hand now buried in Fred’s jumper. ‘It’s quite terrifying, really.’

‘I will not ask his full name and I do not want anyone to inform me,’ Fred said loudly, shaking his head. ‘I won’t acknowledge the fact that any nephew of mine has a stupid name such as the one I _suspect_ you’ve given him—’

‘You may take that up with Professor Dumbledore, Mr Weasley,’ McGonagall cut in. ‘Since he is back with us as well.’

Lavender began laughing in disbelief, still sniffling but mostly loud and carefree. ‘Of course, _of course_ he is,’ she said between breaths.

Ginny looked at Harry meaningfully then. Her eyes glanced quickly towards Remus and Tonks, and Harry caught what she was telling him immediately. When he turned to face them, allowing McGonagall, Lavender, Ginny and Fred to talk gleefully, they looked eager in a scared sort of way.

‘Wotcher, Harry,’ Tonks said, drawing him into a deep hug that would have made Molly Weasley proud. Her voice was soft, and when she drew away from him she wiped hurriedly at her eyes. Remus put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

‘Speaking of children,’ she began in a wobbling voice, ‘we have to ask about … about—’

‘Teddy is a wonderful, brilliant boy,’ Harry said for it was all they needed to know and it was the absolute truth. Remus let out a long, deep breath that was halfway between a sigh and a sob. It stuttered to a long, unsteady halt. Tonks’ face crumpled.

‘Has he … has his life been …’

‘I’ve made sure,’ Harry’s voice wobbled on the edge of a very tall precipice, ‘that even without you he’s had the best he could have ever had. And he has had me and Ginny, and the kids, and Andromeda, and all of the Weasleys, and all of his friends. And, I think, he knows he’ll always have us.’

For the first time, Harry saw Remus’ eyes fill with tears even though he was obviously trying to hold them back. He could never have guessed, on that dark day when Remus had tried to join them on the run, that they would end up here.

‘All we could have asked for,’ Remus said as he drew Harry in, ‘I knew it Harry, I knew it. I knew you would be perfect. Thank you.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof! A big one! (Sorry for last chapter's cliffhanger)


	13. Late Nights and Time Keeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out the events that led to them hiding in the Room of Requirement, and Mr Weasley shows Harry a suspicious Muggle alarm clock.

**Chapter 13: Late Nights and Time Keeping**

* * *

‘How did you know what had happened?’ Harry asked when they had all sat down around the fire, each nestled in deep, warm armchairs.

‘Pure luck, all of it.’ Remus said, smiling. ‘Dora and I came to at night-time, very close to each other at that. Everything silent of course, nothing out of place—we were both really rather confused because the castle was hardly how we left it. So we wandered around for a little while until Dora thought there might have been some sort of ceasefire, and the only place we thought the Order might be after looking in the Great Hall—also completely empty, of course—was here.’

‘Not a soul in here, either,’ Tonks continued. ‘But it had a radio so we started listening and can you imagine what we felt like when it was playing adverts for things like self-trimming candles and not talking about the entire bloody war going on? We thought it must be a trick from You-Know-Who, to stop people coming to fight or something, and then in comes Fred—’

Fred rose to the occasion. ‘I said bloody hell, Tonks, I could have sworn you caught a killing curse back there, and then I told Remus it was a pretty poor time to take a nap because I’d seen him lying outside the Charms classroom when I was duelling Dolohov and I would have bet on it that he looked done for.’

‘They were both dead,’ Harry said, and swallowed against his dry throat. A beat of silence followed their eyes around the room, wherever they had tried to look to escape it.

‘How did you all find each other?’ McGonagall asked. She was the only one who seemed to ignore the quiet and stared pragmatically at each of them in turn. Harry saw even Remus avert his eyes nervously. McGonagall looked especially at Lavender.

‘I was the last,’ she said in answer. ‘I didn’t come much after Fred though. I went through all the secret passages I could think of—I thought they were all little Death Eaters or something. And I didn’t want to be seen because I’d stand out so much, what with their all wearing uniforms and me … well …’

‘But how did you know?’ Harry asked again, ‘if the radio wasn’t playing anything?’

‘Kingsley’s speech,’ Fred said promptly. ‘Talking about people looking like dead people coming back to life—I mean it wasn’t had to fill in the gaps from there. Especially after the last thing I remember was a great bloody explosion and bits of castle flying everywhere.’

Ginny lowered her face to her hand and massaged the bridge of her nose between two fingers. She was taking several deep breaths, as she did when Al became obsessed with learning how to be a Parselmouth at the age of eight.

‘We thought Tonks could go out and try to get information, you know, pretend to be a student.’ Fred carried on, oblivious. ‘Amazing room, made her a brand new Hufflepuff uniform each time.’

‘And I went too, so Tonks didn’t have to do it all the time.’ Lavender said.

‘You’ve got some strong blood there, Harry,’ Tonks said, grinning, ‘I knew as soon as I saw him, that he was your kid. Gets just as suspicious too—I’m glad you’ve found us because he’s started to run away from anyone in a Hufflepuff uniform.’

‘And the other one, uh, James?’ Lavender said, continuing when Harry and Ginny nodded absently. ‘I—sort of—camped out by the Great Hall at mealtimes to ask him about it. But I’m not sure I believe some of what he’s been saying …’

‘Sounds right,’ said Harry while rubbing his face and shaking his head. ‘He did say in his letter— _oh_!’

Harry looked at Ginny, and her head shot up to look at him. After a moment they started laughing in large huffs, Ginny clutching Harry’s forearm for support.

‘Er—’ said Fred from somewhere nearby.

‘Both of them wrote to us about it,’ said Ginny.

‘We only read them today, the letters—we just didn’t think it would actually be—oh my god,’ The thought jolted through Harry’s mind and lodged there. They had met his children …

They stopped laughing quickly but Harry felt his cheeks quirk up involuntarily every now and then as they continued.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ Ginny said. ‘You’re here, and you’re all so young … I forget sometimes, how young we were.’

Harry nodded. His heart stopped at the thought of his children fighting a Dark Lord at the age he had. James would be just about off to face a colony of Acromantulas, if he followed in Harry’s footsteps. An involuntary anger grew within him, old and gnarled, as he thought of all the adults who should have protected him from doing such things.

But it withered when he glanced over McGonagall’s drawn face, and then died when his gaze rested on Remus, who stared back. He looked weary … a sadness in him that Harry struggled to remember not being present. Perhaps he, too, was thinking about how much he would have liked to protect Harry when he was younger. Or how much he wished he was there to protect Teddy.

‘You must stay in here, for now.’ McGonagall said, staring into the fire. ‘The Room provides for you, after all … and there is no safer place than Hogwarts school.’

‘I agree,’ Harry said. ‘You’ll only be kept in a cell of some kind. Separated. That’s where the others are stuck, until we can get this moving and prove it all.’

‘You remind me,’ McGonagall said, ‘I will send a letter to Mrs Weasley, to give her permission to use the full extent of the Hogwarts library for her research.’

‘She’ll be thrilled,’ Ginny said drily.

Then Fred shouted. ‘Excuse me! There’s more of us? Do we know them?’

All four stared between Harry, Ginny and McGonagall. Harry squirmed.

‘ _Harry_ ,’ said Tonks as her eyes narrowed. Harry thought briefly about how she might want her job back, now.

‘We had Marlene McKinnon and Fabian Prewett come back together, at the Ministry,’ he said, to a shuddering gasp from McGonagall. Remus’ head bowed in shock, and Tonks rested a hand on his shoulder.

‘There was Scrimgeour, too—you know, the old Minister that was killed.’

‘You mean the one that died less than a year ago,’ Fred said smartly. Ginny glared at him.

‘But, well,’ Harry steeled himself, ‘before that we had Sirius. And—Dumbledore.’

He stared at his knees, but he felt the eyes upon him all the same. Tonks swore softly, and Fred rather loudly. Lavender shook her head over and over again. Later, Harry would find it quite amusing, how _these_ dead people were so shocked at _other_ dead people being alive.

‘You’re keeping Dumbledore in a cell.’ Fred said suddenly. Harry heard the grin on his lips before he looked up and saw it.

‘Oh, Fred,’ said Ginny, shaking her head.

‘I can’t believe it … Dumbledore … and _Sirius_.’ Remus’ hands covered his mouth and his eyes shone. Tonks was frozen next to him, staring over his shoulder.

‘Believe me,’ Harry said, ‘I know.’

Everyone began talking at once, all with an air of disbelief. There was a dreaminess to the conversations that was not entirely the fault of the warmth of the fire or the windowless walls. Time stood still in the Room of Requirement, though it would have stood still anywhere else too. Harry watched Lavender talk with an increasingly emotional McGonagall clinging to her arm … watched himself talk with Remus and Tonks as they asked more and more about their son … watched Ginny be pulled aside by a serious Fred, asking about his twin.

The Christmas just gone, Harry had felt so very complete. He had sat with his family around him, painstakingly built by hours of friendship and shared hardship, constructed over the decades with both chosen and unconditional love. And somehow, in this room, he found he was more complete than ever before.

* * *

Harry returned to work the next day both brighter and heavier. He was tired from the taxing reunions and late-night conversation with Ginny, but overjoyed they had reason to happen at all. But he felt the familiar foreboding that a long, steep road was ahead of him and he could not tell how long, nor how steep it would be.

As usual, the Auror office was heaving. The thing about the Aurors was that they weren’t the only ones who covered a case—there was Hit Wizards and Witches waiting to be sent out for minor offences, Accidental Magical Reversal Squad members reporting back on suspicious circumstances … and, apparently, the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office loitering on the waiting stools which had seen better days.

‘I just can’t quite see the point,’ Mr Weasley was saying with an intense look on his face. ‘Surely they could simply burn the bread on the fireplace? With a rack of some kind, perhaps?’

Rupert was slack-jawed. Harry knew how he felt; even after all his years in the magical world the ignorance of his older superiors still struck him. Unfortunately, Mr Weasley had somehow discovered Rupert was muggle-born. Harry suspected it was something to do with the Tottenham football scarf pinned to the side of his cubicle.

‘Most muggles don’t really have open fireplaces …’ he said weakly. He only saw Harry approaching when he cringed at Mr Weasley’s aghast expression.

Following Rupert’s eyes, Mr Weasley spotted Harry too with a large smile. He clapped Harry on the shoulder and said ‘Harry!’ with glee.

Harry was not as happy to see his father-in-law as Mr Weasley was to see him. Flashes of Fred stormed through his mind, and his stomach dropped as he saw similarities between father and son. Harry imagined losing James, Al or Lily, but he simply couldn’t. And at that, he was unsure how open he would be to the idea of someone actively keeping them from him like he was doing with Fred.

What if they got some back but lost others because of it?

‘—something we found,’ Mr Weasley was saying. ‘Simple enough raid of course, quite routine, only in Bromley—flat above a closed down Muggle shop and a children’s home I think. The lads brought it back and I’m glad they did because it’s got some rather nasty spellwork on it.’

He looked at Harry expectantly, and he saw they had been moving towards his office. Mumbling, Harry wrenched open the door and crossed the threshold quickly. He eyed the growing pile of parchment on the corner of his desk with the feeling of dread thumping to the bottom of his stomach.

Mr Weasley sat on the old sofa; a cast off from the staffroom. He removed a lumpy cushion from beneath him with a small smile which Harry didn’t think he was meant to see. He tapped the teapot on the filing cabinet next to the door, warming the tea within.

‘Here,’ said Mr Weasley, withdrawing from his pocket a wooden box. He placed it on the table between them; Harry on the green chair usually reserved for visitors on the wrong side of his desk.

‘What is it?’ He asked. Mr Weasley simply opened the lid.

Expecting something ghoulish or rancid, Harry was taken aback to see a relatively small alarm clock. Even more strange was its Muggle nature—it was electric. the batteries were still in, and the time flashed back at Harry in bright green. He frowned.

‘Alarm clock? An electric one?’

‘Yes. That’s what was so confusing to the team. They usually ignore anything of the sort, and with how Muggles are these days there are more artefacts in their homes with electric than without.’

Harry still considered his Christmas-time rudimentary explanation of electricity to Mr Weasley his crowning achievement of the year 2005. It was also the year James was born.

‘Was it a Muggle home? The flat?’

‘Well, it was, but not anymore. We’re certain some dark wizards have been holed up in it for some time.’

‘And the spellwork?’

Mr Weasley scrubbed at his glasses. ‘That’s the tricky bit. It’s heavy with all sorts of compulsion charms, privacy charms, the odd hex and repellent. An odd little piece of warding against any older people getting a hold of it, too.’

‘But it’s battery powered …’ Harry murmured, still staring. He moved closer.

‘Don’t touch it, of course,’ Mr Weasley said hurriedly. ‘But yes, yes … it was the electricity that had us stumped. For that amount of magic and for the clock to still work …’

‘It’s got to be a powerful wizard. Or at least, quite clever.’

‘Exactly.’ He halted and seemed worried which made Harry uneasy. Mr Weasley was never without a smile. ‘The magic … it’s very dark, some of it. And, you know, dark magic—requires a lot of intent. We also found some traces of the Doubling Charm.’

‘There’s more of them out there, with the same spells? You think?’

‘Almost definitely. You don’t go through all that trouble just to get another Muggle clock. They’re being used for something, but blast if I know what for.’

Harry turned the idea over in his head. Somebody was taking Muggle clocks, cursing them to oblivion, and yet was still managing to make them function with multiple spells running through them. Briefly, he considered this being something to do with Sirius, Fred, Marlene, the rest … perhaps they had been summoned through time? Then his mind drifted onto the thought of all the different years they had come from, and how they looked good as new without a scratch on them. The dead coming back to life was impossible but even more so was time travel to that extent.

He doubted it was all an after-effect of a few cursed clocks.

‘We’ll look into it,’ Harry said firmly. ‘And find more of the same thing, too. Or rule out there being more at the very least.’

Mr Weasley looked grateful. They spoke a little more, and when he left jovially waving back at the other end of the corridor, Harry waved back, trying to wave away the guilt of keeping Fred from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone—sorry for the delay. Gleefully quit my job the other day so as you can imagine I’ve been sorting out lots of life stuff. I should be back on my fortnightly uploads now—next update scheduled for 17th November. But—the plot thickens! Some actual plot! Please let me know what you think; I am not overly happy with my writing this chapter but glad things are moving.


	14. Ostendo Aima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione brews a potion, and everything suddenly moves forward.

**Chapter 14: Ostendo Aima**

* * *

Harry had half a mind to speak to Sirius. Then his thoughts drifted to the others, and realised that fresh in the minds of Marlene McKinnon and Fabian Prewett were his parents … there was no nostalgia clouding their judgment of them just yet. To them they were peers, and hopefully even friends of theirs.

And not even that… these miraculous people, existing in spite of nature, had a wealth of knowledge about things Harry couldn’t even begin to name. How exactly was the Order of the Phoenix formed? Who had attended his parents’ wedding? It was easy to forget these gaps in the timeline of his life when so much of his existence now concentrated on what he could manage to do in spite of the holes in common memory. He spent time on his children, his family, his job. He had wasted far too long in the aftermath of the war thinking backwards, and he did not want to repeat that dark time.

Polly Mortenstone—a small, mousey woman who had worked with Audrey for a time and now nested in the Minister’s department—was suddenly in front of Harry. He had been staring at the cell corridor rather bleakly.

‘Mr Potter,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Oh—hi, Polly.’

An eerie sound, that in some life could have been an awkward laugh, was pulled from her. ‘The Minister wanted me to collect you. He said it’s important—he, um, told me to say that, rather specifically actually—’

Harry sighed. ‘It’s all right, Polly. I’ll come now. We’ll walk together.’ He tried to offer a winning smile, but Polly merely looked terrified.

After all but begging her to call him by his first name and finding no success, Harry opened the Minister for Magic’s office door with a sigh. He had barely stepped foot on the rich olive-coloured carpeting before he jolted in surprise.

Biting her thumbnail and staring into the middle distance from a visitors’ chair was Hermione. She sat stiffly in a pinstriped suit, though her hair was loose and looked as if she’d been scraping it back for hours.

‘Oh,’ Harry said.

‘Harry!’ said Hermione.

Kingsley raised his hand in greeting. ‘Harry.’

Then, from the deep burgundy armchair on the right—‘All right?’

‘Ron?’ Harry asked. He stared, bewildered. Ron was lounging and twirling his wand between his fingers like a baton, reclined and looking relaxed.

‘I’ve… missed something here.’ Harry stated to the room at large.

‘I didn’t ask you here,’ Kingsley said, waving his hands as if to absolve himself entirely. ‘Hermione did.’

‘But Polly—’

‘Well, I passed on the message.’

Harry glanced between Hermione and Ron with a crumpled brow. Hermione glared at her husband.

‘I didn’t want him to come,’ she said, ‘he bullied me into it—’

‘ _Me_! Bully _you_?!’

‘He said he knew so he should be involved! Shoved Hugo through the floo to yours, thank god we knew Ginny was home, and just walked right though—’

‘Kingsley doesn’t mind, do you? Kingsley?’

‘I gave up with you three sometime in the mid-nineties, let alone getting involved in your marital woes.’ He did not look up from the newspaper he was reading.

Hermione would not be rebuffed. ‘This is very unprofessional, Ron! You retired from the Ministry years ago, you run a joke shop now, honestly—’

‘She’s not wrong,’ Harry said, looking at Ron apologetically. He shrugged and rolled his neck.

‘This meeting is off the record anyway,’ Kingsley interrupted the domestic argument developing in front of him and sending a questioning look to Hermione. ‘And, personally, I’d like to find out why that is.’

‘Hermione!’ Ron gaped. ‘Off the record! Naughty, naughty—’

‘Oh, shut up. You sound too much like George.’ Hermione huffed and dragged her unclenched hand through the hair around her face.

Harry sat gingerly in the chair next to Hermione, facing everyone but the snoring Ulick Gamp, who slumped against the left side of his frame. His spectacles were centimetres from sliding off his bulbous nose.

‘What is it?’ Harry asked Hermione. His heart quickened in his chest… was it possible that she had figured it out?

She looked intensely back at him. Her mouth opened and closed again. Uncharacteristically, Hermione had no idea where to begin.

‘She’s figured it out!’ Ron’s voice burst through the quiet.

‘ _Ron_!’ Hermione hissed.

‘So it’s the lookalikes.’ Kingsley sighed. He dropped his quill and closed his eyes briefly; but Harry wasn’t focused on him. Hermione began speaking in a rush, in the same breathless way she always had.

‘There’s that potion, Harry—the one they used before, and I managed to get the end result going. They hadn’t gotten very far with it, but I saw where they’d got in wrong quite easily, even from looking at the theory of it. They thought lacewings would be a good idea, _really_ —but it needs a relative of theirs to do the last little bits of mixing, you know, just a couple of turns and then the incantation—but I think I really might have cracked it, but we need to test it but I just couldn’t think and I’ve been up all hours trying to work it out and I’m not sure it’s going to work at all, really, but I’ve got some and—’

‘All right,’ Kingsley said, staring. ‘If you could tell me what this is about, I would be quite appreciative.’

None of them wanted to do it. Not Harry, who avoided Kingsley’s eye by staring at a loose thread in his trouser; not Hermione, who took several quick and shallow breaths; not Ron, who scratched his long nose and shuffled his feet.

But, of them all, Harry was burdened with the most responsibility, given he was leading the entire investigation. After so many years, it still occasionally twinged at him to consider he was doing legitimate sleuthing now. And with that, came letting the adults know.

‘Has anyone ever told you about the Map?’

‘The Map?’

Harry talked and Kingsley listened with an inscrutable look. He reclined on his chair, his arms crossed loosely on his chest, head tilted just so.

He couldn’t help it—Harry kept glancing at Ron and Hermione’s faces as he had always done. Some part of him was trying to gauge the direction this would take… whether he would be carted off to the long-stay ward at Saint Mungo’s.

Explaining it all brought a strange perspective. Mere days ago, life was simple. And then there was Sirius, his wand, Fabian and Marlene, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Scrimgeour, the Room of Requirement. Upended world views left and right, hour by hour.

When Harry had stopped speaking, and Hermione had stopped adding footnotes, Kingsley did not move and inch. He stared into the middle distance with a frown.

‘The Map,’ he said, having only just learnt of its existence, ‘how do you know it never lies? How can you be sure? James and Sirius were brilliant wizards, even as teenagers, but to create something so… infallible, like that…’

‘It showed us Peter Pettigrew, when he was still Scabbers,’ Ron piped up. ‘Though, to be honest, Kingsley, they knew things only they would know. What did Dumbledore say, Harry?’

‘He knew the shape Snape’s Patronus took.’

Kingsley narrowed his eyes. ‘And that’s privileged information, is it?’

‘Yes,’ Hermione said sharply.

‘This…’ Kingsley hung his head as his arms were thrown up in frustration. ‘How can I believe you? How could I possibly believe this? I trust you, of course I do—’ he had perhaps spotted the affronted expression Hermione wore, ‘—but the dead? The ones we mourn every year? How can I?’

‘We have proof!’ Harry said loudly, only to immediately regret it when Kingsley raised a brow. ‘We’ve got a chance; a second chance, that nobody has ever had before. We have to take it.’

‘How are you proving this, then?’

Harry looked to Hermione. She shuffled. She explained in halting speech, meeting nobody’s eye as she went on. When she mentioned the trials of the war, Kingsley moved uncomfortably. As soon as she mentioned blood, he gave a full-bodied jolt.

‘ _Merlin_ ,’ he hissed and they all sat still, barely breathing.

‘This is completely unprecedented!’ Hermione said more shrilly than she meant to, if her immediately sheepish look after was anything to go by. ‘It might be unorthodox, Kingsley, but this is all we’ve got. What if more people come back, and we have nothing to ask them that proves the truth? If they have no family left? Do they rot in a cell for the rest of their lives?’

‘This isn’t a solution, Hermione,’ Kingsley said angrily. ‘We need consent for Truth Serum, let alone taking their blood! I don’t care if you have a resurrected Bellatrix Lestrange in there, you need their permission, Death Eater or Merlin himself!’

It was a stand-off. Harry stared at Kingsley, who eyeballed him back. Hermione looked at Kingsley. Ron, meanwhile—

‘Have you tried asking?’ He said.

‘What?’ Asked Harry dumbly.

‘Well if you have to ask their permission, you might as well see if they do agree before you start panicking about it. If they say no… can’t you just go from there? Keep them locked up until they do agree?’

‘Well…’ Harry exchanged a look with Ron. Even Kingsley looked at him, suddenly appraising.

‘I’m not so sure we could lock them up until they agree.’ Kingsley scratched his nose absently. ‘I can’t even believe I’m considering this. You’ve all gone mad.’

‘We can’t just walk in and ask them, Ron,’ said Hermione. ‘We’ve got to find their relatives first.’

Harry and Ron seemed to come to the same realisation at the same moment. They looked at each other with wide eyes. Harry thought of Percy murmuring about his uncle in shock.

‘Fabian Prewett,’ Harry pointed at Ron, ‘it’s his uncle in there. Molly’s brother. Will that be enough?’

Hermione, looking a little shellshocked at the realisation, nodded. She had a very nervous look to her eye.

* * *

Fabian’s head shot up instantly as he rocketed to the corner of the cell when they shuffled in. He eyed them each—Harry warily, Ron suspiciously, Hermione receiving no more than a customary glance. It was Kingsley that he settled on, squinting and frowning.

‘Why do you look like that?’ He stared at him.

Harry recalled that they were likely peers; perhaps at Hogwarts around the same time, or fighting in the Order together. Kingsley had known Harry’s parents, after all, and Fabian had thought Harry was James.

‘We need to ask your permission for something.’ Kingsley said. He was softly spoken, gentle, as if he were speaking to a child or trying to talk someone down from a ledge.

‘I wouldn’t have thought my permission would mean much around here.’

‘Things are different now. Very different.’

‘I’ve noticed.’ Fabian scowled. ‘When I came in for my interview the other week I certainly wasn’t tackled and arrested.’

‘We’re not at war anymore, Fabian. Look, I’m not sure how to explain this to you, but—'

‘What, did you think I wouldn’t notice the paper’s date is fifty-odd years into the future?’

Harry’s brain fuzzed for a second. He was unsure how Fabian had gotten a hold of a newspaper to begin with, and thought it was probably Rupert that had offered it to him. He considered, briefly, having a stern word… but hadn’t the heart, when considering how much easier it had made this interaction.

Ron coughed. Fabian’s narrowed eyes turned to him rather than Kingsley. ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ He asked.

Ron shrugged. ‘Sort of. We’re related.’ Fabian’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. ‘Look… if you want to get out of here soon you’ve got to help us out a bit.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We need your blood. Just a drop, for a potion that proves you are who you say you are.’

‘Just a drop!’ Hissed Fabian. As he stood suddenly, Harry couldn’t help gripping his wand in his pocket.

‘I know it’s a big ask,’ Kingsley said as Fabian scoffed, ‘but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.’

‘I don’t even know who you are! How do I know you’re Kingsley? And how exactly are we related, if that’s even the truth?’ Fabian rounded on Harry and Hermione. ‘Why d’you look so much like James Potter? Don’t even get me started on who you are or why you’re here—’

‘Watch it,’ said Ron, ‘that’s my wife.’

‘I’m sorry, but how exactly does that make any difference to me?’

Kingsley let out a large, long groan. ‘Merlin’s balls,’ he said as he walked quickly over to Fabian and whispered into his ear for a minute. Though Fabian jerked away when Kingsley first encroached on him, he quickly began to lean closer, eyes growing rounder in tandem.

Looking much more insecure, Kingsley retreated and shook his head at Harry, Ron and Hermione’s enquiring looks. He crossed his arms and returned to staring at Fabian, who seemed to stare back at him in wonderment. Harry was certain, then, that Kingsley had just confirmed his identity without doubt. Quickly, Harry decided he would like to find out what shenanigans had just recounted to Fabian in the near future.

‘All right, fine.’ Said Fabian eventually, looking weary.

Hermione began groping around in her pocket and already had a tiny silver stirrer in her other hand. ‘Really? I—’

‘Just do it before I change my mind,’ Fabian snapped, glaring at the wall and sticking his hand out into the air obstinately. From the corner of his eye Harry saw Kingsley wave his wand and mutter a charm; he assumed it was taking note of consent to procedure as he himself had often done during interrogations. But if the suspect agreed to Truth Serum in the first place, they were likely innocent, which took something of the thrill out of things.

Harry saw Ron move uneasily out of the corner of his eye when Hermione carefully squeezed a drop of blood from Fabian’s fingertip.

The phial was an unextraordinary size, yet smaller than Harry had imagined considering its worth. The potion was a sludgy green, the colour of dark bogies, and was about as appealing to look at as Polyjuice Potion. He hoped it was at least a little nicer to drink.

‘Now, I’ll pop this in here—’ Hermione said, gesturing to the ooze of blood on Fabian’s forefinger and the phial, ‘—and then Ron will have to stir it and say the incantation. I’ve got it written down.’

Carefully and with an air of great stress and importance, Hermione scooped the blood from Fabian’s finger with the very edge of the phial’s lip. It was underwhelming—the blood slid down the inside of the glass pressed by the weight of the eyes upon it. Nothing happened when it met the potion.

Without word or preamble, Hermione handed everything to her husband. She watched him intensely as she told him the appropriate motions; two counter-clockwise, then clockwise for twenty-eight seconds, then counter-clockwise for another two stirs. Harry heard the tinkling of silver as Ron’s hands began to shake a little.

Harry peered over at the scrap of parchment Hermione had given Ron. _Ostendo Aima._ He immediately thought of all the times over the years Hermione had berated Ron for his spell pronunciation. From the look on Ron’s face, he was thinking of the same thing.

But he must have said it correctly, for his wand emitted bright silver sparks, the potion glowed a lurid yellow, and Hermione gasped.

‘What does that mean?’ Harry asked reverently.

Hermione looked at him and then Fabian. ‘It means… well. A match.’

Stillness. Harry knew that the potion would have to be scrutinised and picked apart to ensure the result was the true result, that it was infallible… but it was a victory and a large one. It was hard to think of such formalities and processes when he was being proven right.

Fabian looked at them with an unreadable expression. Harry couldn’t blame him.

‘Well,’ Ron breathed. ‘I’m your nephew.’

Fabian looked closely at him and narrowed his eyes. ‘Billy…?’

‘Oh no,’ Ron laughed, ‘there’s been quite a few more of us since then. Your Christmases are about to get expensive.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Please let me know anything you'd like to read about.


	15. An Unread Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry talks to Teddy over bad mugs of tea.

**Chapter 15: An Unread Letter**

* * *

Seven days had passed, rolling into each other without notice amongst the rain of a bleak January.

Kingsley had moaned and groaned, but had come through when Harry needed him to. Calmness was his strong suit; a presence that wrapped around any room he was in. Even Percy, dubiously returning to work and eyeing Harry suspiciously at every turn, seemed more settled.

As far as Harry knew nobody else had returned. But that was certainly not to say they hadn’t and it kept him awake at night thinking of people from either war wandering around, clueless. During the daytime he researched the war-dead endlessly. He thought of those like Benji Fenwick; brutally murdered. The Bones family; annihilated. Ted Tonks; hunted like an animal.

Ginny tried to make it hard for Harry to dwell on things, but it was a difficult task. Especially when faced with his godson, knowing he would have to turn his world upside down for good, all for a drop of his blood. He hoped Teddy would be joyful, but when he compared their situations, it was equally hard to comprehend.

But now they had reached the breaking point. Kingsley had a carefully drafted statement courtesy of his and Hermione’s clever minds. Ron and Ginny had been to Hogwarts to negotiate with McGonagall the best time to manoeuvre the stowaways back to Harry and Ginny’s and Ron and Hermione’s. Lavender pleaded to stay at Hogwarts; likely blanching at the possibility of living with her newly adult ex-boyfriend.

Harry had been spending his time carefully curtailing suspicious looks from his own Department, which were at their height when he called them in the Monday morning before the announcement—due in the afternoon on Tuesday. He gathered them all in the dilapidated staff room, on the mouldy sofa and conjured chairs. Proudfoot’s was especially magnificent.

‘Anything I say now does not leave this room.’ Twelve pairs of eyes stared at him. They seemed to understand the magnitude of the situation because not even Dawlish made a snide comment despite being called in on his day off. Harry was half tempted to make them all sign a cursed piece of parchment like Hermione had in the days of the D.A., but thought they might err on the offended side.

‘Right. You all know of our suspects in the holding cell?’

Rupert raised his hand. ‘Er—this isn’t counting Geoff Botts, is it?’

‘ _Rupert_!’ Hissed Morgan Vance. ‘He’s just over-flow from the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad you idiot!’

Harry decided to leave Rupert alone after that; he shrunk back into the sofa red-faced and sheepish. He was the youngest there and got most of the good-natured bullying anyway.

‘We have made definite progress with the matter. We’ve had to use—well, blood magic—’

Roberta raised the singe eyebrow of hers that wasn’t covered by an eye patch as Calder nearly jumped from his seat. Proudfoot made a loud sound of disagreement and Dawlish asked ‘Who’s _we_?’ In an aggressive whine.

‘The Minister and I.’ Harry said through gritted teeth, glaring.

‘Blood magic?’ Roan said. He had a dark look on his face, as did the rest of the senior team. They looked more grizzled than most of the team, but had a right to be—they had all survived the war (though everyone agreed Dawlish had rather… thrived.) Roberta and Proudfoot were newly qualified during Voldemort’s first rise.

The younger members knew blood magic was bad, of course, but had never been in such close proximity to it as Proudfoot, Calder, Roberta, Roan and Dawlish. Their impression was rather abstract… and it showed on their mildly taken aback faces as they looked at their seniors.

‘It was the only way we had. We might find something else, but for the time being, this is all we’ve got.’ Proudfoot looked like he was about to bite Harry’s head off. Roberta stared menacingly.

‘Have you found out who they are?’ Amber asked from the right-hand side of her brother.

Harry sighed. ‘Yes, I… Look. It’s hard to believe. You won’t believe me, in fact.’ He looked at them all closely. ‘They’re not lying. They are who they say they are. They’re telling the truth.’

‘What?’ Thomas Cresswell asked after a moment. Harry remembered his father had been killed on the run alongside Ted Tonks.

Harry pressed his glasses further up his nose. ‘Dumbledore, Prewett, McKinnon, Sirius Black… Scrimgeour too, at Saint Mungo’s.’

Dawlish exploded. ‘One of them just so happens to be your convict Godfather? And Dumbledore—’

‘Dawlish.’ Roberta said quietly. He shut up immediately—but remained scowling.

‘Sirius Black was cleared of all charges.’ Harry said. Dawlish snorted, muttering about his disbelief. ‘You don’t have to take my opinion on his imprisonment into account, Dawlish, but considering he was meant to be the one that sold my family out to Voldemort in the first place, it might be an idea.’

Harry would have very much liked Dawlish to respond. He kept his voice steady but was aching for a reason to sack him. Sadly, some sort of line Dawlish was unwilling to cross had materialised. It was likely related to Roberta’s single-eyed glare.

‘How does blood magic help things?’ Calder asked.

‘And, uh, why blood magic?’ Laurence added.

‘Everything else can be faked… I think we know that more than anyone.’ Harry looked at them all. They all remembered the particular brand of insane they’d dealt with a few years ago. ‘But your blood, your magic… no amount of Polyjuice’ll change it. It’s important, it’s why blood is so central to most dark rituals. It’s tied to who you are.’

Most of the eyes on him had the certain look that told Harry they were seeing him as the Boy-Who-Lived, rather than Harry the Auror. He was long acquainted with it—when somebody mentioned Lord Voldemort, when the killing curse cropped up.

Roberta looked at Harry. ‘Dead people,’ she said drily. ‘I suppose it’s not the first time it’s happened.’

Harry struggled to stop his shoulders bunching up under his ears from discomfort. It certainly wasn’t the first time it’d happened, no.

‘Do you think it’s anything to do with it?’ Amber asked.

Dumbledore floated around Harry’s head—his theories about most every key event of Harry’s life which were more reliable than newspapers. Harry thought of the battle and of dying. ‘Knowing the way things usually go, it’s got everything to do with it.’

Nobody looked especially thrilled to have bits of the war come back to haunt them, especially because that was how the second war started in the first place—cast-offs and forgotten pieces of a war thought finished emerging stronger and angrier, no longer able to be ignored.

Harry took pity on them.

‘Who’ve I placed at Saint Mungo’s, then?’ He asked, ignoring Proudfoot’s glare at the change of topic.

‘Me and Winnie have been swapping shifts,’ said Rupert. ‘We haven’t been doing nights though.’

‘Keep doing that, but get—uh—get Morgan and Thomas on the rota. We don’t know when they’ll show up but a hospital seems like the first place to go if you’re confused.’

* * *

‘I think I’m running away from them.’ Harry said to the room at large.

Ginny turned from her Quidditch magazine. She didn’t quite look up at him, but her shoulders tilted so he knew she was listening. ‘Who?’

‘The whole office, really. Winnie tried to corner me but I ran off to the loo. Roberta won’t stop staring—do you know how much more intimidating that is when it’s all concentrated in one eye?’

‘Harry, you’re being ridiculous. What more could you tell them, anyway?’

‘I don’t know… offer some support maybe? I can’t tell them more than what I have because I don’t know any more, but I could explain a bit?’

‘Harry you haven’t got a clue about that mumbo jumbo.’ Ginny sighed and looked at him. ‘You sat down with a few of them after, didn’t you? What else can you do?’

Part of the problem was that Harry didn’t know what to do. All his years of training seemed for nothing. He abhorred it. He had spoken to Thomas about his father, had spoken to Morgan about her aunt Emmeline. He’d even endured a stressful meeting with the senior team—Dawlish, Roberta, Proudfoot, Calder and Roan—to clued them in on everything he knew in relation to the wars. But beyond the tense quiet that had fallen over the office in the wake of Harry’s bombshell, nothing more was to be done.

‘I just dropped it on them.’

‘Harry, they’re Aurors. This is their job. How else were you supposed to tell them, anyway? There’s no way to be gentle with something like this. You can’t leave clues about the place like a treasure hunt.’

Ginny moved closer to him. She looked around briefly, nervously. ‘You are doing better than anybody could have imagined. Especially because it’s you. You’re overthinking things.’

Lump in his throat, Harry nodded and tried to smile. ‘It’ll be out soon.’ He looked at the envelope.

_THIS LETTER IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE AND AS SUCH WE ASK YOU READ IT PRIVATELY._

_To the family of Remus John Lupin,_

_We hope this letter finds you well. While this letter is not charmed for secrecy, we would still ask you to kindly exercise discretion in discussing the contents below. We ask you to refrain from discussing matters publicly until 13 th January 2017. On this date the Minister for Magic, Mr Kingsley Shacklebolt, (Order of Merlin, First Class) will hold a conference in the main Atrium of the Ministry of magic to announce the following. You are invited to attend with one other witch or wizard. We ask you to please bring this letter with you as proof of identity and invite._

_Earlier this month various witches and wizards previously thought deceased were found alive and well in the Ministry of Magic. Since this initial event more victims of war have come forward with the earliest date of death estimated at 1979. We write on behalf of the Minister’s Office and the Auror Office to notify you of these extraordinary circumstances in the hope it will aid both your preparation and alertness._

_The Minister wishes to personally emphasise that we have proven, beyond doubt, the identities of the returned witches and wizards. The methods by which this was achieved cannot be disclosed for safety purposes but the Minister assures you that every precaution has been taken and various processes of extensive authentication have been taken to reach this point._

_Should you come into contact with a witch or wizard previously thought deceased, no matter the circumstances of death, we ask you to have several pre-prepared security questions ready. We also ask you to immediately contact the Ministry and/or the Auror Office. If you or another member of your family require healing as a result of the return of the deceased witch or wizard, please report to Saint Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries as soon as convenient where a representative of the Auror Office will be with you shortly._

_We wish you a happy new year! Yours sincerely,_

_Kingsley Shaklebolt_

_MINISTER FOR MAGIC_

_Ministry of Magic_

Remus had no other family—the letter would have to be delivered to Teddy. Tonks and her father had Andromeda, but Remus’ closest family was Teddy; an adult now never mind still painfully young for something such as this.

With guilt at such nepotism, Harry asked them both to come to his house after work. Andromeda couldn’t make it… but Teddy could. Harry was unsure if this was a blessing or a curse, for Andromeda was kind but strict. He dreaded to think of her face if she read the letter without Harry managing to speak to her first. She was nothing if not headstrong—and so Harry left her to whatever group she was going to, hoping the combined efforts of he and Teddy could curtail her.

‘She’s at one of her clubs,’ Teddy said as he walked in. His eyes rolled under a black fringe. ‘I can’t keep track. Sometimes she’s knitting, sometimes it’s cross-stitch, sometimes it’s kestrels—’

‘Tea?’ Interrupted Ginny. He nodded and fetched a mug as she tapped the kettle. It whistled, high-pitched and ugly. Harry flinched in his seat.

Teddy chattered as Ginny mixed tea leaves and stirred. Clinking mixed with his voice, and as his wife handed him his cup, she looked at him meaningfully.

‘I’m off to mum and dad’s.’ Ginny said briskly. ‘I’ll be back at quarter past six-ish. Lily’s already there.’

‘Bye Ginny!’ Teddy smiled. Harry looked at the clock and saw he had forty minutes. He cursed her—she had given him a deadline and the perfect, quiet opportunity.

Harry stared at his tea. It was too weak, the leaves barely brewed… Ginny, too, had been absent-minded and in a hurry.

Teddy spotted it. ‘Yeah—not up to her usual standard, have to say. I think I got an extra sugar.’ He paused. ‘This is more like the rubbish you knock up in the mornings.’

‘Ha.’

Seeming to notice Harry’s moroseness, Teddy peered at him over a hesitant sip.

‘Sorry, Ted. Something’s come up. I’ve got a letter for you but I have to explain it.’

‘For me? Pass it over—’ he lunged for the parchment in eagerness. Harry snatched it away from him while Teddy looked back in shock. ‘All right…’ he said, ‘I won’t read it then. What is it?’

‘You, uh…’ Harry couldn’t quite breathe properly. ‘You remember when Ron came over? With the Map?’

‘Oh, sure. Bit weird.’

Yeah. Well. We saw a few names on there. Or—I showed him some names on there.’

‘That’s the point of it Harry, it shows you where people—’

‘The people it showed were dead, Ted. Ron acted like that because the Map doesn’t lie.’

‘Like Pettigrew.’ Teddy said quietly. ‘You and my dad saw him. I remember you telling me.’ Harry couldn’t look him in the eye…he had a lump in his throat that choked him and stinging in his eyes. He nodded.

Teddy’s brows scrunched together. He was too old for his hair to change colour by feeling, but Harry wouldn’t be surprised if it brightened soon enough. ‘Who did… are you sure it’s them?’

‘Yes. We’ve done tests at the Ministry.’

‘Wow. The Ministry? It’s big then?’

Harry laughed mirthlessly. ‘It’s big, Ted. One of them was Dumbledore.’

Teddy gaped.

‘And Ginny and Ron’s uncle. And—and Sirius.’

‘ _Harry_ ,’ he breathed. ‘That’s great! That’s brilliant. I can’t imagine—I can’t wait to meet him. It’s really him? I trust you but they’re dead—’

‘Teddy. This is really important for you to understand.’ Harry leant forward as Teddy leant back. ‘These people are who they look like. We’ve really, _really_ checked. I wouldn’t—’ Harry struggled to swallow, ‘—I wouldn’t tell you otherwise. It’s why we have the letters ready.’

‘Wow, Harry. I don’t know what to say. Dumbledore… _Sirius_. Do you think he could tell me stuff about mum and dad? Do you think he’s got good stories?’

‘ _Ted_ …’

His Godson stared at him. It seemed he had noticed the atmosphere hovering around Harry like a cloud. Before Harry could say a thing, his amber eyes (amber today) flickered towards the letter. They fixed upon it.

‘You said that was my letter.’ He said.

‘Yes.’

‘You said you had the letters ready. To do with the, uh, people.’

‘Yes. I… Teddy… I don’t know how to say it.’

‘Let me read it.’

Harry grabbed Teddy’s wrist as it shot out to the letter. It would be so much easier to let him read it, but he could never allow him to find out like that. As he eased his grip and the arm slunk back to the edge of the table, Harry saw the paleness of Teddy’s face and the bags sitting, bright and deep, under his eyes. Perhaps he had lost some control on his appearance, but Harry thought he had simply not bothered to look good. Why would he, for a trip to the house he had spent half his life in?

‘It’s your parents, Ted. At Hogwarts. On the Map.’

He had never been a still child and he had never truly grown out of it. But here he was, petrified, listlessly staring down. Minutes clattered past, not a second unnoticed by Harry as he looked on.

‘I haven’t got anything to say.’ Teddy said finally. His eyes were glassy, shining, as he looked at Harry. ‘I don’t know them. I don’t know what they sound like. I don’t—’

‘I can’t imagine, Teddy. I’m sorry. It’s so much to take in.’

‘Harry, you _can_ imagine.’ He looked at Harry imploringly. ‘You’re the only one who can imagine.’

Harry thought how odd it would be to see his parents as real people with flaws and feelings and faces sitting among his children and friends. He thought he could understand a small, insignificant amount of what must be in Teddy’s head. But he could not comprehend.

‘Oh, Ted—’ Harry stood, chair rattling, and pulled his Godson into an embrace. Teddy’s hand clutched at the jumper he buried his face in, forehead resting just below Harry’s heart from where he sat, shaking.

‘I’m sorry… I know…’ Harry kept murmuring. He wondered why this felt like mourning when it was the happiest event. It was like living their deaths again.

Teddy kept apologised as he pulled his face away. His skin was blotchy, cheeks stiff from tears. Harry’s vision was fogged from his own; glasses stained as he took them off and rubbed them on the hem of his jumper.

‘I know it’s bad,’ Teddy said as he stared at his hands clenched in his lap. ‘But I don’t think… I can’t see them just yet. It’s like… I’ve forgotten they were people. Before. Now.’

‘You can see them whenever you want to.’ Harry said firmly. ‘They won’t mind a bit.’

A watery smile was forming on Teddy’s face as the sound of the floo rushing loud bored through the quiet. The clock said it was six o’clock—too early for Ginny to be home when she had allocated this time so firmly for Harry and Teddy.

It was her voice, even so. ‘Harry? HARRY! Merlin’s Balls—HARRY!’

‘What?!’ Harry shouted back in alarm.

Ginny trampled into the kitchen, yanking a disgruntled Lily by the arm. ‘Ted!’ She said, face brightening.

‘Oh I’m sorry—God—Teddy I’m so sorry darling it’s just he’s only gone and told her! The idiot’s bloody told her and now she’s looked at the letter and I think she’s coming over now and I managed to get to the fireplace before her because she was grabbing dad but she’ll be here any minute, any second now—’

And the fireplace whooshed again and in stormed Molly Weasley, form backlit by her husband and who knew what other family members emerging from the grate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Sorry about the impromptu hiatus—I couldn’t even give you a proper reason why other than life is crazy at the moment and Christmas hardly helps things. I thought it was meant to be a quiet one this year? But somehow, with no family visiting, I’ve wasted all that time even more!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this. Please let me know of any suggestions, or anything you want to see or scenes you’ve painted in your head. I’d love inspiration!
> 
> I can’t commit to a certain date for the next upload because of the insanity of a third lockdown, working from home, exams and coursework and general fuckerroundery. C’est la vie, right?
> 
> Thank you for all your comments and likes, favourites and subscriptions. They mean so, so much to me.


	16. Stag and Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry comforts Teddy, sends a message via Patronus, and gets a reply.

Chapter 16: Stag and Wolf

* * *

Suspended in time for a moment, they all took pause. Something burnt in Mrs Weasley’s eyes, and Harry avoided them. She clutched a sealed letter in her hand. Small mercies were, indeed, the most appreciated.

Mr Weasley’s face had crumpled like tissue paper; in confusion, shock, loss, or something else. Harry could hardly bear to look at the laughter lines creasing in such sadness.

‘George wasn’t home, thank _goodness_!’ Molly Weasley said lowly as Ron stepped, ashen and guilty faced, from the grate. ‘Who knows how he would have reacted!’ The fire flared again; out came Lily and Hugo.

Teddy’s mouth hung open in some trance of shock. Harry couldn’t blame him. Ginny’s eyes were wide and round as she took in Harry and Teddy at the table over her mother’s shoulder.

‘Mum—let’s go in the other room—’

‘Ginevra!’ She said in a very high-pitch. ‘Your brother has suggested—he _said_ —’

Ron’s freckles stood out as he paled. ‘Mum, I told you, let’s sit down and I can properly explain!’

They kept arguing. Harry had no idea what Ron had let slip, but he was sure it was something to do with the letter crumpled in Mrs Weasley’s hand (thankfully still unopened) and her uncanny ability to spot when her child was hiding something from her. Ron certainly looked shifty enough.

Harry looked to Teddy, stiller than he’d ever seen him. He had always been a part of the noise of the family, rousing the children when they were little into shrieks and wails. ‘Ted,’ Harry said gently, holding his forearm.

Teddy looked at him. His eyes were glassy.

‘Let’s get some air, okay? Go outside?’

He nodded dumbly. He muttered ‘Molly…’ under his breath, but allowed himself to be steered out the back door and onto the small, peeling bench that stood next to it. Harry sat at the other end and waited.

‘Is my—do you think my grandad…?’

‘Ted?’ Harry asked, a little surprised. He scratched his chin; he needed a shave. ‘I’m not sure. I really couldn’t say. There’s not a template for this sort of thing.’

‘It would be nice. For Gran.’

‘It would be. But for now… do you think it’s nice? For you?’

Teddy sniffed. Looking at his profile, Harry found it impossible to fathom how the boy was only a little older than Harry when he fought Voldemort for the last time.

‘I don’t know what to think.’ Teddy said eventually. The pause he left after was punctuated by shouting from the kitchen which he didn’t seem to notice. ‘I don’t know them. I don’t know what they sound like or even what they look like, really. Did you know I didn’t realise what dad’s full name until I was about seven? Harry, I don’t know who I am with a mum and dad.’

‘I don’t know who I would be either.’ Harry said.

Teddy turned to look at him fully. ‘Do you think, maybe, that yours—’

‘I’m not the one we’re talking about, Teddy.’ Harry shook his head. ‘But who knows. I’m trying not to think about _what ifs_ as much as possible.’

The wind whistled around them. It was biting and Harry wished he had thought to cast warming charms. He was unsure where his wand was—likely on the kitchen table. How times had changed, that he was so nonchalant about it.

‘I’m scared.’ Teddy admitted quietly. ‘I think I should be grateful. And happy. But I’m just scared. I don’t know if I want things to change. Is that selfish? What if—what if they don’t like me—’

‘Oh, _Ted_ ,’ Harry closed the distance and put an arm around his godchild. ‘It’s not selfish. There’s no right way to feel about this all. Anything good feels terrifying. Going to Hogwarts? Terrifying. _Leaving_ Hogwarts? Equally horrible. And I’ve got no doubt, not one at all, that they’ll hate you. They love you.’

‘They love a baby, they don’t love _me_.’

‘Well you love them, don’t you? Even though you’ve never met?’

It stumped him. Ted looked down at his lap where his hands, reddened from the cold, twisted around themselves. The very tips of his hair turned a faint yet queasy yellow.

‘I’ll promise you something,’ Harry said softly, waiting until Teddy turned to look at him properly before continuing. ‘Say they don’t like you. Say your worst fear comes true. Everything will go back to how it is now. Or—before.’

Teddy’s eyes widened. They were the same colour as Remus’. ‘What?’

‘You’re my priority, Teddy. If they don’t want anything to do with you—which is ridiculous, I want to make clear, by the way—but if they don’t, we’ll go back to how it was before. I’ll never see them. Okay?’

‘But you miss them, don’t you?’ He struggled with his words for a moment. ‘Or—or did, at least.’

‘Of course I did. Every day. But you’re number one here, Ted. Always have been. This moves at your pace, all right? I promise you’ll be no worse off with parents than without.’

Teddy stared. He slowly nodded. Then they turned and looked into the garden as one. The silence turned over them in a wave.

But—

Harry heard Teddy emit a strange noise after a few minutes. Unbelievably, his face had cracked into a grin through the wetness on his cheeks and the redness in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry—I just—’ he sniggered, ‘I never thought you’d say that. It’s mad. Just, completely—’

‘Stop,’ Harry said, the smile tugging at his lips, hysteria bubbling at his tongue. ‘I’ve had to— _Scrimgeour_ Ted, honestly—’

‘No!’ Teddy guffawed.

Harry’s throat strained to try and keep the laughter in. ‘Stop it, Molly—’

Teddy laughed something deep and rolling. It was a bark, so much like Sirius’. ‘She—she—’

Harry never found out what Teddy was about to say, though he doubted Teddy knew much about it either. Ron emerged from the kitchen looking shell-shocked, to see them both heaving air.

‘You’re laughing,’ he said disbelievingly.

‘It’s the shock!’ Harry stuttered out wiping the beaded tears from his eyes.

‘We don’t know what—oh my—’ Teddy struggled to get his breathing under control, ‘—it’s just weird, Ron, _parents_ ,’

‘Well I’m glad you’ve been enjoying yourselves,’ Ron huffed. ‘I’ve had to get the kids upstairs, and I’ve had mum screaming until she’s blue in the face in there, and when Ginny finally calms her down a bit and she asks for Harry I come out here to—’ he waved his hands in their general direction.

Harry looked at Ron. Ron looked at Harry. The glint in Ron’s eyes urged him forward.

‘My life, Ron,’ he said, ‘I mean, really? _Really_? It’s a cosmic joke. A big, fat—’ Teddy barked out another laugh over him.

Ron started giggling with them. ‘Stop it—shut up,’ he tried.

* * *

When they finally went into the kitchen, Harry was sure Ron and Teddy’s stomachs ached just like his. Mr and Mrs Weasley were clutching mugs of tea, and Ginny wore the taut expression of one who needed a long, deep rest. The kitchen had a solemn, weary air that sucked mirth quicker than a Dementor.

‘Harry,’ said Mr Weasley. His hand reached out the Mrs Weasley’s forearm automatically.

Harry wordlessly took a seat adjacent to him. He opened and closed his mouth in search of something to say.

‘It’s all right,’ Mrs Weasley said, reaching out to take his hand, ‘I’m sorry for raging in here. It was—Ron hardly explained very well.’

Ron made a disgruntled noise by the door. The look Ginny and her mother sent his was both identical and scathing.

‘Ginny told us everything,’ Mr Weasley said. His eyes filled with emotion again and it was hard to look at. ‘We’re just having a hard time believing… we’ve seen that Map of yours, but…’

An idea struck Harry like lightening. ‘What about a Patronus? One of them must know how to send one? Like in the old days?’

Ginny drew a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure—Fred, I don’t know if he’d have got round to it, but Remus—’

‘My dad?’ Teddy asked quietly from next to Ron.

Mrs Weasley rose in a bundle of noise; chair scraping, mug thumping, a whirl of movement to gather Teddy in a bone-crushing hug.

‘Oh Teddy,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think, you poor boy! I can’t believe I—oh I’m sorry, all this about Freddie—’

As she gushed, Harry looked at Mr Weasley. He nodded gently and gave Harry an encouraging smile. He could hardly believe it was him being comforted at such a time.

Summoning Prongs was as easy as falling asleep after a Quidditch match. He stood, gleaming and proud, amongst the people clustered in the kitchen. He looked painfully out of place, but felt like home. ‘Go to Remus Lupin.’ Harry said to him, looking him in one steady eye. ‘Ask him if they’re all right. Ask if they need anything.’

Bowing, Prongs turned and left through the cooker. The trail of silver dissipated like moondust.

What followed next was perhaps the worst piece of waiting Harry had done in his life. It was matched only by Ginny’s long labour with Al, or maybe the only stakeout he and Dawlish had ever done—particularly uncomfortable in more ways than one. Even worse they only waited ten minutes, maximum.

Mrs Weasley had allowed Teddy to escape her clutches. She had returned to her tea and was dabbing surreptitiously at her eyes. Ron had turned the radio on, and told Lily and Hugo to go back upstairs when they tried to sneak around the ajar kitchen door—now firmly shut.

Harry’s fingers were tapping a sad rhythm against his fresh mug when the Patronus arrived.

It was a wolf, just as before. Its fur was silky; it looked much healthier, somehow, than the last time Harry had seen it. Not that he remembered in the slightest when that was. He half thought his own mind was playing tricks on him, giving it a brighter glow and a softer look in its eye.

When it opened its mouth to speak, Harry looked to Teddy in instinct. It was filled with wonderment.

‘ _Thank you for asking, Harry, but we have everything we need here. The Room is just brilliant, and the elves have been very accommodating. Lavender and Dora say hello, of course, and Fred wants you to know he’d like to leave soon because he doesn’t want to have to actually finish his NEWTs. Thank you again, Harry. Keep us updated—keep in touch_.’

Mrs Weasley buried her face in her hands as Mr Weasley pressed his own to the crown of her lowered head. Ron’s mouth hung open at Remus’ voice. Teddy merely looked amazed, with a sheen over his eyes that stared at the spot the wolf had vanished into seconds ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for bearing with me. A short chapter, but still something. Life's been a killer recently!
> 
> As always, shoot me any ideas you have, or things you'd like to see.


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